This article offers insights into the overall program development process and--institutional obstacles and constraints notwithstanding--successful introduction of a new national security program at a small liberal arts university at a time of growing institutional prioritization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs.…

The purpose of this article is to describe a collaborative effort among five teacher preparation programs to create a conceptual tool designed to put clinical experiences at the center of our programs. The authors refer to the resulting product as a clinical curriculum. The clinical curriculum describes a developmental sequence of clinical…

Superintendents and principals can have a positive and decisive impact on student achievement and higher graduation rates. Their essential leadership can illuminate the path to excellence for faculty and students. In upgrading curriculum and instruction, school leaders need to keep abreast of practices proven effective in other districts and…

This article highlights the development process and data-driven decisions that characterized a 5-year iterative process of development and evaluation of a Tier 2 early language curriculum, "Story Friends." This curriculum was specifically designed to be effective and feasible for high fidelity implementation in preschool settings.…

This dissertation is the result of research which examined the implementation of professional learning communities in a primary school. Professional learning communities or PLCs are groups of educators coming together collaboratively in a process of inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. While there were…

In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into its largest-enrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on its main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25…

This paper will describe a unique partnership among the Department of Teacher Education and School of Engineering at the University of Dayton (UD) and the Dayton Regional STEM Center (DRSC). This partnership resulted in the development of the STEM Education Quality Framework (SQF), a tool to guide educators in teaching, learning and refining STEM…

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) has widespread appeal in higher education as a suite of teaching strategies that promotes learning through students' increasingly independent investigation of questions, problems, and issues using the methods of inquiry of the disciplines. Framed as especially appropriate for research universities, IGL has been…

This brief provides an overview of the Instructional Improvement System (IIS) models for State education agencies in Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island, along IIS goals in the following areas: (1) Standards and Curriculum; (2) Instructional Practices; (3) Assessment and Growth; (4) Learner Profiles; (5) Data…

English 109.02 is the second of a three-course basic writing track available to all students at The Ohio State University, Ohio's largest public university and flagship institution, which in total serves approximately 45,000 undergraduate students across all campuses. While the Columbus campus places students into the course based on a preliminary…

To keep pace with accelerating technology and workplace expectations, high school and technology center students need access to high-level programs and courses that open the doors to further education and careers. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and nine states have launched a far-reaching program to provide rigorous and relevant…

Response to Intervention (RtI) has promise for helping students, particularly ones with disabilities, achieve higher levels of academic and behavioral success in the general education classroom. What does it mean for gifted students or for those who are gifted and have a learning disability, such as twice-exceptional students? How might current…

Guided by a new framework, the NAEP science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts related to properties and changes of matter, forms…

Guided by a new framework, the NAEP science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts related to properties and changes of matter, forms…

Zili Sloboda, Sc.D., and colleagues at the University of Akron, Ohio, designed and evaluated "Take Charge of Your Life", a substance abuse prevention curriculum for 7th- and 9th-grade students delivered by D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) police officers. They designed "Take Charge of Your Life" to impact students'…