Friday, March 13, 2020, was a professional learning day for many school districts in Connecticut. The timing was fortuitous because it gave educators a chance to make plans for the coming weeks. In the previous few days, they had learned that schools were going to be closed for a couple of weeks due to the rising threat from the pandemic that…

While higher education plays a critical role in society, little is known about the motivation of faculty members within such institutions. In this paper, we explore the faculty motivation to voluntarily cocreate an interdisciplinary course as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of our qualitative, phenomenological study highlight…

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid survey instrument that would prove useful in identifying faculty with the capacity and inclination to succeed in team-taught, hands-on, transdisciplinary course programming. Using an exploratory, mixed-methods design, the qualitative component consisted of semi-structured interviews of…

Too many students still experience the factory model evident in most U.S. high schools, which were designed to put young people on a conveyor belt and move them from one overloaded teacher to the next, in 45-minute increments, to be stamped with separate, disconnected lessons 7 or 8 times a day. While these factory-model designs may have worked…

At St. Joseph's School for the Deaf in New York, teachers worked together toward the common goal of developing and implementing a spiraling English Language Arts curriculum that would allow each teacher to build on skills students developed in earlier classes. They collaboratively developed instruction following the literacy workshop model…

This article presents an in-depth study supporting the Scientist in the Classroom Partnership (SCP) program as a model of effective professional development (PD) for K-12 teachers. The goal of this study was to determine the core and structural features of the SCP program necessary for effective teacher PD. The SCP partners a classroom teacher…

With the emergence of new academic demands created by curricular reforms such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), policy makers and educators have recognized that the linguistic complexity of new curricula requires greater coordination of instructional efforts in teaching English language learners (ELLs). However, the literature has yet to…

This article presents findings of a longitudinal case study conducted at a Taiwanese high school from 2006 to 2010. This school participated in the 'High Scope Programme' (HSP), which was sponsored by the Taiwanese National Science Council to promote curricular innovation in science education. Utilising interview data with 11 participating…

This article interrogates the "soft power" of teacher teamwork by probing the ways in which authority conditions the appropriation of institutional motives through collective meaning making. The study analyzes the interaction of a teacher-leader and a science teacher team across two settings of professional development organized to…

Many science educators know of the pedagogical benefits of inquiry- and research-based labs, yet numerous barriers to implementation exist. In this article we describe a faculty development workshop that explored interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations as potential mechanisms for overcoming barriers to curricular innovation.

This study draws upon survey and administrative data on over 9,000 teachers in 336 Miami-Dade County public schools over 2 years to investigate the kinds of collaborations that exist in instructional teams across the district and whether these collaborations predict student achievement. While different kinds of teachers and schools report…

Researchers have found that middle school students undergo developmental changes that require unique educational structures and support. As a result, experts have suggested a number of specific strategies for organizing middle schools in order to best meet students' needs. This Information Capsule summarizes middle school redesign initiatives that…

University provision for academic development is well established in the USA, UK and many other countries. However, arrangements for its provision and staffing vary. In Australia, there has been a trend towards professional rather than academic staff appointments. Is this appropriate? In this paper, the domains of academic development work are…

This is a descriptive self-study of my experience participating in IRA's Diagnostic Teaching Project in Tanzania. The paper describes the teacher educators with whom I worked, their responses to IRA's curriculum, and what I learned about Tanzanian people, culture and education. Data are derived from a Likert survey, an open-item questionnaire, and…

Teacher leaders assume a wide range of roles to support school and student success. Harrison and Killion describe 10 roles that teacher leaders can fulfill in their schools. As resource providers, they provide materials to help their colleagues. Instructional specialists help colleagues with instructional strategies, and curriculum specialists…