In the biosciences, a professional placement experience in academia or industry is intended to contribute to a student's personal and professional training. While there is a general acknowledgement that a placement experience is beneficial for students, recent years have seen a decline in the number of students choosing to go on placements. Using…

The potential for music programs to promote psychosocial wellbeing in mainstream schools is recognised in both policy and research literature. Despite this recognition, there is a dearth of consistent research evidence supporting this link. Authors attribute this lack of consistent evidence to limitations in the areas of research design and…

A comparative analysis of the perceptions of special education teachers in the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) regarding the importance, comfort, and frequency levels of educative activities to further develop their teaching skills was conducted by the researcher in order to apply findings to the development of future professional…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of high school teachers regarding social presence in online instruction. Participants were nine teachers, all new to teaching online. The influence of an Online Social Presence Rubric was studied along with other variables that affected understanding of social presence during one…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among bell schedules, GEE 21 science scores, and cumulative GPAs. Factors under consideration included teacher perspective, gender, ethnicity and students' at-risk status. The researcher collected data from the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) targeting seven schools for three…

The challenges for secondary schools and principals in the United States include changing demographics, schools and curricula that are inappropriately designed for today's adolescents, principals trained to be managers rather than instructional leaders, and a dramatic shortage of qualified candidates willing to take on the principalship. The…

Comparative research on teachers' perspectives and classroom behavior must focus both on external systematic and institutional influences and on individual differences in teacher personality and background. One such systematic study of French and English elementary school teachers identified "meta-national" similarities and international, local,…

This paper examines the educational impacts of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI), a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology access to all students and teachers across five public and private middle schools in western Massachusetts. Using a pre/post comparative study design, the current study explores a wide range of program…

This paper reports a study to investigate the views of early childhood educators working in a range of early childhood settings in four European countries, Denmark, Greece, Italy and the UK. Recent research into European perspectives on early education, special educational needs and inclusion is reviewed highlighting: a multinational call for…

A comparison of changes in traditional pre/post self-assessment ratings with changes in retrospective pre/post self-assessment ratings for 29 medical faculty members indicated that retrospective pre/post ratings may provide a more sensitive and valid measure of the effects of faculty development efforts. (SLD)

The issue of what educational research has illuminated to date about the universally accepted practice of student teaching is discussed in this paper. A critical review is provided of selected literature on student teaching within the context of two contrasting paradigms for conducting educational research: psychometric and social-anthropological.…

A study was conducted to ascertain which dimensions of children's classroom behavior are seen to be important by teachers and how accurate teachers' perceptions are of children's behavior in terms of such dimensions. Teachers in six suburban fourth-grade classrooms rated classroom behavior of each of their students (105 boys and 78 girls) using…

Within the arena of public school reform, teacher empowerment and participation in the decision making process at the building level are of paramount importance. A collaborative team of teacher educators and public school staff was assembled to assess various perceptions of site-based decision making throughout Georgia. A random sample of 400…

A quasi-experimental design was employed to determine the effects of a workshop, designed to familiarize teachers and counselors with a technical institute in the North Carolina Community College System, on knowledge and attitudes related to the programs and practices of the institution. Subjects were assigned to experimental and control groups by…

Six papers are presented from an American Educational Research Association symposium. The symposium explored the kind of research needed for increasing understanding of college and university faculty and examined the manner in which different scholarly techniques can contribute. The symposium objective was to open for discussion four modes for…