Elementary teachers continue to endure increased pressure as additional weights are pressed from state requirements and recommendations, local and national social burdens heighten, and confrontation with increased student needs persist; yet support structures devised for teachers to be able to enact transformational leaps lack. Questions guiding…

Low levels of academic success for primary grade students attending rural schools located in the southern region of the United States may be related to student resilience. Researchers have found that educators can support the development of students' resilience, which can result in improved academic success, but little is known about how teachers…

The requirements associated with school accountability measures, the increased demands instituted by mandated reforms, and the issues of global competition present an authentic need to support teachers in their desire to be successful in their teaching practices. This basic qualitative research study used semi-structured, open-ended interview…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate teachers' perceptions about the impact of the McREL Teacher Evaluation System on their professional growth. The sample comprised 15 teachers of students in Kindergarten to Grade 4 in a suburban New Jersey school district who participated in Year 1 implementation of a new standards-based…

My dissertation, a self-reflective autoethnography, examines, analyzes, and interprets children's dances created by seventeen nine-11 year olds attending a Midwestern, urban elementary school. The significance of this longitudinal study is in the offering of a fresh perspective on children's dance-making as a mode of embodied understanding and as…

This single site qualitative study examined the issue of low student achievement in mathematics in the state of Georgia using data from the Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), the Georgia High School Graduation Test, SAT scores, ACT scores and scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The purpose of the study was…

The purpose of this study was to explore one Indiana elementary teacher's perceptions of her Latino immigrant students as they become English-language proficient by providing an in-depth analysis of a 4th and 5th grade teacher at a local school. Findings are based on interviews with the focus teacher and with the personnel she works with such as…

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to identify the need for educators' use of lesson study as a professional learning community to increase communication between colleagues. Lesson study is considered a form of professional development in that, educator colleagues work with one another to plan, implement, critique, and revise a lesson…