The lesson study methodology allows Extension educators to reflect on instructional practices and gather formative data that can be used to refine curricula. We trained Extension educators and formed a community of practice (CoP) of agents who used the lesson study method to inform improvements of a 4-H coding curriculum. The CoP planned and set…

This study investigated teachers' perceptions of the nature of support, or lack thereof, while teaching deaf students with additional disabilities (DSAD). A total of forty teachers, from five schools in four states in the United States, participated in the study. A content analysis of written responses to four open-ended questions, using a…

Skill sets have been identified as the abilities needed by an individual to perform a job or task. In this mixed methods study, an online survey was developed to collect data identifying those skill sets and the barriers to effective inclusion in rural schools in the Black Belt region of Alabama and Mississippi. For rural administrators, this…

Foreign language (FL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching present considerable challenges in the rural U.S. South. Local language ideologies, budgetary considerations, and challenges in other curricular areas (e.g., math and science) lead to marginalizing both FL and ESL in schools. This article examines the personal and professional…

School leadership has been shown to exert a positive but mostly indirect influence on school and student outcomes. Currently, there is great interest in how quality leadership preparation is related to leadership practice and improved teacher outcomes. The purpose of the study was to understand the moderating influence of leadership preparation on…

The research to practice gap continues to be a prominent concern among professionals in the field of education. Traditional staff development in which teachers attend presentations and workshops for a few days each year has been one method for attempting to bring empirically validated instructional practices into the classroom. Unfortunately,…

The impact of the "No Child Left Behind Act" on the Achievement Level Index (ALI) of three elementary schools in the Mississippi Delta was explored. Achievement variation over five years (2003-2007) was examined through the perceptions of 58 teachers with regard to changes in their schools due to the Act. Using analysis of variance,…