Despite the presence and potential impact of instructional coaches, many schools are not experiencing significant improvements in teachers' practices or student achievement. In gaining more insight into forces that impact instructional coach effectiveness, this study (a) explored the relationship between sources of instructional coaching efficacy…

"During the past two decades, two-year and four-year colleges have increased their reliance on part-time faculty" (Antony & Valadez, 2002, p. 41). The hiring of part-time faculty started as a convenient way to meet the demands for instruction while remaining financially responsible during tough budgetary times. Currently…

The combination of the recent push for reform-based teaching and federal legislation has placed a renewed emphasis on professional development across all content areas. The development of content standards and the No Child Left Behind Act have created new expectations for students to achieve, as well as for teachers to utilize better teaching…

The purpose of this study was to identify the possible use of structured classroom walk-through observations as a strategy to improve teaching and learning. A wide variety of programs and initiatives have recently been implemented across the country to improve student achievement. One such initiative is classroom walk-through observations.…

This research was designed to study the effect of a professional development program in place-based science education on teacher and student learning in rural elementary schools in Thailand's northern Lampang province. Based on the results of a pilot study conducted in 2008 at one school, which was then followed by a needs assessment conducted…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to determine if training mentors in the use of the Cognitive Coaching process could effectively facilitate their own critical self-reflection and improve their pedagogy. This study consisted of a criterion-based sample of four teachers in a metropolitan Chicago school district and followed the…

In the past two decades, the issue of out-of-field teaching (OFT) has concerned policy makers and researchers alike who see raising teachers' subject matter knowledge as the main policy lever to improve teacher quality. The study of OFT has emerged as one of the important subfields of teacher quality and teacher labour market research.…

Professional Development (PD) is an important tool in the field of education. Successful PD programs are those that include adult learning methods and opportunities for experiential learning and discussion. The university where this action research was conducted does not offer formal training to adjunct instructors. The adjunct instructors are…

More than twenty years of research have been devoted to the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification process, much of it focused on the effects of National Board certified teachers (NBCTs) on student achievement. Less attention has been paid to the effects of the process on teachers' skills and practices, while…

A mixed methods study examined how a newly developed campus-wide framework for learning and teaching, called the Learning Model, was accepted and embraced by faculty members at Brigham Young University-Idaho from September 2007 to January 2009. Data from two administrations of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory showed that (a) faculty members…

This is a quasi-ethnographic (qualitative) interview examination of understanding teacher professional development for urban and suburban high school mathematics teachers. Since teacher professional development has been found to be critical in improving student learning such as mathematics achievement, and teacher professional development is…

Teaching computer programming to freshmen students in Computer Sciences and other Information Technology areas has been identified as a complex activity. Different approaches have been studied looking for the best one that could help to improve this teaching process. A proposed approach was implemented which is based in the language immersion…

This qualitative study explores the experience of specialist teachers specific to their individual roles within the coaching model (CM). Reasons for in-depth study include (a) Rochester's struggle to meet federal and state student achievement benchmarks, (b) practitioner frustrations from site-level resistance or CM use, and (c) shifting role…

The purpose of this study was to obtain the perceptions of cooperating teachers in beginning and middle school instrumental music regarding their student teachers' skills and knowledge both at the beginning and at the end of the student teaching experience. The related research has focused primarily on two areas of music teacher education. Program…

This study addressed the problem of chronic low student achievement in language arts at a Program Improvement 5+ school by implementing two cycles of facilitated lesson study. Using action research to facilitate and monitor change in instructional practices at a school that is currently undergoing a teacher-initiated turnaround reform effort, this…