What is known about college students' search for purpose more than ever before due to the scholarly attention devoted to purpose development over the past two decades. This growing research on purpose increasingly makes it clear, as Tim Clydesdale ( 2015 ) writes, that when colleges "launch sustained conversations with students about…

Key findings from a new study highlight how Learning Forward's long-standing position on professional learning correlates with practices in high-performing systems in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and British Columbia. The purpose of this article is to share key findings from the study so that educators might apply them to strengthening…

In this article, the author reflects on findings from research on the role and impact of teaching assistants and experience of working as a special educational needs (SEN) officer. Research evidence suggests the reliance on teaching assistants to include pupils with Statements of SEN in mainstream settings masks a collective, though unintentional,…

Despite the influx of immigrants in the American workplace, little is known about their well-being. The authors built on literature pertaining to gender-specific stressors and organizational support theory to examine a model of stress for immigrants. Analysis of a national, archival data set (N = 150) demonstrated that, consistent with research…

Perceptions of the role and efficacy of written feedback in teaching and learning among teaching staff in British higher education institutions have not been extensively researched. In the present study 48 lecturers in one university and from a cross-section of disciplinary backgrounds were interviewed with respect to their lived experiences with…

Federal, state, and local policy makers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms are transforming the early childhood teacher education process. These reforms affect how early education teacher candidates figure their role as teachers. By employing Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain's conception of figured worlds to analyze the…

In this study, we document a reflexive process via bracketing techniques and the development of a conceptual map in order to better understand how emotions that arise in the field can inform research design, implementation, and results. We conducted a content analysis of field notes written by a team of researchers who administered an interview to…

This article examines and critiques the leadership capacity of department leaders in a high school and attempts to gain a deeper understanding of how department leaders perceive their role as teacher leaders, making a distinction between what an individual department leader does in his or her position and teacher leadership as a form of continuous…

Reformers suggest that parental choice will improve equity by making it possible for parents to select better schools for their children. A key assumption behind this claim is that parents choose from a set of schools that range in quality. Data from this longitudinal interview study suggest this assumption may be false. In one Midwestern city,…

This article explores the role of leadership, experts, and expertise and the functioning of teams in nine schools that modeled an exemplary integration of technology to support schoolwide instructional improvement. Through cross-case analysis, we identified three different staffing patterns and two different support patterns in how the technology…

This article analyzes the role of service-learning faculty fellows programs in promoting pedagogical innovation and university-community engagement. The analysis is based on the findings of a study conducted among former fellows at two universities in North Carolina, USA. The faculty fellows programs had a strong influence on participants'…

This study used testimony, documents, and interviews to examine the use of information in higher education policy making. The article discusses the coalition alignment regarding the state's tuition assistance program and the concomitant information sources on which each coalition drew in the budget process. The results show that there were…

Although lecture and lab courses are commonly used in higher education, there are potential problems with this format. However, technology is presenting new opportunities for teaching such a type of a course. This study explores the changes in the role of the instructors when a lecture and lab course evolved into a hybrid course, with the lecture…

This study assesses the perceived role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) including the Internet, mobile telephone, CD/MD/MP3, television and VCR/VCD/DVD in raising quality of life (QoL). A comparison is made between three Chinese cities, namely, Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong, to see if differences exist in the perceived value of…

This article suggests that the union learning representative (ULR) is increasingly situated at the heart of trade union activity. The paper draws upon recent research based on interviews with national trade union officers and case studies of union learning activity to explore the competing demands being made upon ULRs and the implications for…