The purpose of this basic narrative qualitative study was to explore the experiences of first- and second-year teachers and mentors regarding professional learning and new teacher mentoring programs from three highly effective schools in the state of Missouri through personal interviews and related documents. The three highly effective schools…

School psychologists can impact student outcomes by consulting with teams around data. The current study investigated the effects of consultation with Professional Learning Communities (PLC) teacher teams. The study included four teacher teams, observing their PLC practices and providing consultation. Each team was observed with a…

Convening professionals--physically or virtually--is necessary but certainly not sufficient for meaningful collaboration and networking to occur. Professional development (PD) must be designed and carried out in ways that encourage a culture of sustained collegiality (Loucks-Horsley et al. 2003). This article presents seven principles for creating…

"The Eight-Step Process" is a continuous improvement model that focuses on collaboration by disaggregating and analyzing data, developing a common instructional calendar, assessing mastery with common formative and summative assessments, building in time daily for interventions and enrichments for each student on the standards being…

Over the past decade, school districts and states have made impressive advances in collecting and managing data used for accountability purposes. By the year 2011, all 50 states will have systems to track students from year to year. But in most states and districts, all the data generated by these systems flows only one way: up. This paper…

The purpose of this study was to determine if implementing a specific collaborative structure would create effective teacher teams that in turn would lead to improved student achievement. An effective team can be viewed as one that uses collaboration to increase its knowledge and improve its practices. The structure that was implemented during…

Children with hearing loss are best served through the collaborative efforts of their parents and a team of professionals. For communication development and educational achievement, speech-language pathologists and teachers of the deaf working together can have a profound impact. A collaborative approach to assessment, direct instruction, and…

The purpose of this study was to describe how four teachers in four different cities in Missouri implemented a constructivist-based learning environment (CBLE) that included an innovation cluster that paired an emerging online technology with a unit design framework. The motivating question for the study originated from prior research on teacher…