As campus leaders called students, faculty, and staff back to in-person courses and student activities after the COVID-19 global pandemic, they were faced with employee retention challenges, burnout, recruitment limitations, and the changing nature of on-campus learning; there is ongoing discourse around these challenges and the extent to which…

Widespread layoffs resulting from the coronavirus pandemic have put the labor market challenges facing workers, especially those without a college degree, into sharp focus. Workforce training can support the economic outcomes of displaced and unemployed workers, but only if it is carefully designed to connect directly to durable, high-quality…

As the population of Latinx students grows in U.S. public schools and our nation seeks to address systemic inequities, racism, and xenophobia, this counternarrative provides inspiration to those wishing to reinvigorate schools and build a more caring and just world. "Authentic Cariño" documents the innovative practices, successes, and…

A number of states are considering policy proposals to update credential or degree requirements for early educators. Practitioners, policy experts, and researchers have expressed concern, however, that well-intentioned policies to raise educator qualifications without sufficient supports may have negative consequences for the adequacy; stability;…

For years, student test scores drove much of the conversation about school quality and student learning. But new state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) show that policymakers are using a broader set of measures to assess school quality. In addition to math and reading performance, many states will also look at core subjects such…

Dyslexia impacts an estimated 5%-17% of children in the United States is the most prevalent disability in schools in the USA (D'Mello & Gabrieli, 2018; Johnston, 2019; Peltier et al., 2020). The problem addressed in this study was that general education teachers often feel unprepared to effectively support dyslexic learners in their classrooms…

High-quality early childhood education (ECE) begins with well-prepared, highly qualified educators. This brief offers practitioners and policymakers an opportunity to learn from promising programs that recruit and prepare racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse cohorts of educators to teach in programs serving children birth…

Social emotional learning is commonly referred to as the "fifth curriculum" in addition to math, literacy, social studies, and science. However, educators cannot teach what they do not understand, practice, or model. The problem addressed by this study was some educators in private schools lack training in social emotional learning,…

Teachers in a new school setting tend to display lower teacher efficacy, which negatively affects teaching performance and student learning. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the perceptions of teacher efficacy in pre-service teachers and explore key factors influencing the perceptions as a result of pre-service training.…

This case study describes the rationale, development, and functioning of the Elders Learning Community, a nonprofit home and community service program that served older adults in Richmond, California. The program applied a blend of self-directed learning, learner-centered and significant learning approaches, and features of a member-driven…

As with the other case studies in this journal, Ben Moudry and Andrew Christopherson present a vision of a Montessori high school that is focused on fostering the adolescent personality in connection to society. This chapter uses concrete examples of the key experiences and programs that provide the adolescents at The Grove School with this goal…

This paper highlights findings from two aspects of a case study on the partnership between one mid-size California public school district and a private university sponsored literacy project to cultivate teacher efficacy and reignite early student literacy during and after COVID-19 contexts. Grounded in teacher efficacy in literacy instruction and…

The authors discuss an urban public school district's efforts to reinsert play after its mandated disappearance for fourteen years under a scripted curriculum imposed to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind law. The authors analyze field notes, teacher and administrator interviews, coaching records, and surveys to chart the impact on…

This 2-phased instrumental case study explored how student affairs educators in the California State University system experience values congruence in their work environments, specifically in the context of neoliberalism. It also examined how position descriptions convey the values of the student affairs profession and job duties related to…

Outdoor adventure-based experiences allow students to engage in physical activities and process learning tasks within a novel, open environment that is unlike any classroom. Past outdoor adventure-based research has indicated two primary participant outcomes: intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship skills or IIRS (Moore & Russell, 2002).…