This appendix provides additional characteristics of the studies of "Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT)" that meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) single-case design standards, including six studies that contribute to the findings in the "CW-FIT" intervention report and six studies that do not contribute to…

This study examines the impact of a federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant award that expanded a partnership between Cross County School District and the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to create systems that support ongoing, continuous improvement for teachers. Through the implementation of the TAP System for Teacher and…

Individuals involved in the profession of teaching continue to leave the educational profession. This has an adverse effect on the quality of education for the students and increased financial costs for school districts. School districts are in the process of training new teachers that have not attained a traditional education degree in the…

Online professional development offers opportunities for growth to teachers who may not be able to participate otherwise due to constraints. These constraints include, but are not limited to, time and travel distance. This document is a narrative review of relevant literature as it relates to the evolution of teacher professional development. This…

Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers' responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams' goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school. Their…

This paper describes a faculty development project in which 12 teacher educators used the Cognitive Coaching model to engage in critical reflections about their teaching. Each identified an aspect of their teaching they wanted to improve and a colleague to serve as coach. Participants engaged in Cognitive Coaching cycles, consisting of planning…

The notion of inclusion has gained momentum worldwide, with most countries around the world embracing inclusive policies in their educational systems. However, there is still an ongoing debate as to what is inclusion and hence, the consequent challenge of coming up with an agreed definition, which could then be used to plan for and subsequently,…

While many states have adopted new requirements for teacher evaluations in pursuit of Race to the Top funding (Darling-Hammond, 2013), this qualitative case study of one Rocky Mountain school district that has been working on developing a system of supervision and evaluation to support teacher effectiveness for over a decade examines how teachers…

This paper reports on findings from a broader piece of research aimed at investigating the ways in which head teachers experience a new teacher evaluation policy in Portugal, particularly in regard to the challenges and perceived effects of the policy on school and on teacher development. Data were collected through a questionnaire with open and…

The United States is facing an unprecedented teacher shortage. With many studies estimating that 17-33% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of starting a career, something needs to change to keep new teachers in the classroom. This study evaluates the effectiveness of peer observation as a learning tool to supplement the…

This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) report, part of the WWC's Teacher Excellence topic area, explores the effects of the "eMINTS Comprehensive Program," referred to as "eMINTS" in this report, on student achievement. The strong influence of teachers on student outcomes, as well as the variation in teacher effectiveness, has led…

Improving the writing of middle-school English learners can improve their academic thinking, literacy, and content knowledge. The Writing Reform and Innovation for Teaching Excellence (WRITE) program uses six high-leverage writing practices and develops teacher capacity through professional learning activities anchored in the group grading of…

This mixed methods study examined the perceived impact of the creation and implementation of digital portfolios by 29 high school inservice teachers and their students representing 20 school districts within one state. However, most research on digital portfolios has focused on preservice and not inservice teachers. Findings demonstrated that…

An increased need for self-paced, online professional development opportunities in higher education has emerged from a variety of factors including dispersed geographic locations of faculty, full teaching loads, and institutional evaluation requirements. This article is a report of the examination of the design and evaluation of a self-paced…

This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on…