Among the unique affordances of digital simulations are changes in the possibilities for targets as well as the methods of assessment, most significantly, toward integration of thinking with action, embedding of tasks-as-performance of knowledge-in-action, and unobtrusive observational methods. This paper raises and briefly defines key data…

For leaders of schools in the 21st century, it seems there is a never-ending demand on what they need to be doing. Just when they thought they had a handle on traditional testing and ways to improve student achievement, along comes the Common Core Standards, which change the game in many ways. The Common Core will require students to have an…

The advantages of learning communities focused on analyzing social issues and educational repercussions in the field are presented in this study. The research examines the contribution of a learning community to enhancing student teachers' responsibility and their social involvement. The assumption was that participating in learning community…

Increasingly, graduate teaching assistants serve as the primary instructors in undergraduate courses, yet research has shown that training and development for these teaching assistants is often lacking in programs throughout the United States and Canada. Providing mentoring and skill development opportunities for graduate teaching assistants is…

Teaching English to ESL teachers is a challenging task for a number of reasons, the lack of connection between the target language and the native one being one of the most challenging factors (Ferlazzo & Sypnieski, 2013). Therefore, teachers are supposed to be innovators in creating the tools that could boost the learning process, as well as…

Professional development opportunities are too limited for faculty who are learning to teach online. Preparation is typically provided in the form of technology training, with little focus on the pedagogy of teaching over the web. In addition, most professional development programs offer their workshops on campus instead of providing an…

One element of quality teaching for improving student outcomes is effective data use. To date, however, policies have not gone far enough to promote the skills teachers need to be data literate. This brief for state policymakers offers a proposed definition of data literacy along with recommendations for state and federal policymakers. [The…

For students to learn 21st-century skills, we will have to teach them differently than we have in the past. The outdated, transmission model, through which teachers transmit factual knowledge to students via lectures and textbooks, remains the dominant approach to compulsory education in much of the world, yet it is not the most effective way to…

Teachers need professional development to keep current with teaching practices, although costs for extensive professional development can be prohibitive across an education system. Mentoring provides one way for embedding cost-effective professional development. This mixed-method study includes surveying mentor teachers ("n" = 101) on a…

This paper investigates the role of personal networks in academics' learning in relation to teaching. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 11 academics, this study examines, first, how and what academics learn through their personal networks; second, the perceived value of networks in relation to academics' professional development; and, third,…

The teaching profession faces a shortage as well as a decline of teaching skills. A possible way to mitigate this is to implement evidence-based induction arrangements. Seventy-one schools with 338 beginning secondary education teachers were randomly allocated to an experimental or a control group. The experimental schools used induction…

This study is set in the context of a Post Graduate course for Teacher Education where the participants were exposed to a systematic reflective learning strategy facilitated by a structured interactive e-learning platform. The e-platform was used for students to share, reflect and they had demonstration of skills in class. The researcher intended…

A wide variety of out-of-school time (OST) programs across the U.S. offer science education opportunities that cover many scientific disciplines and use diverse pedagogical practices (National Research Council [NRC], 2009). However, to improve youth's scientific literacy, OST educators need to "have the disposition and repertoire of practices…

Although language learning in 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs) has become a focus of recent research, little is known about the knowledge and skills teachers need to acquire to provide effective task-based instruction in 3D VWs and the type of teacher training that best prepares instructors for such an endeavor. This study employs a situated learning…

This qualitative descriptive study aimed to ascertain the extent to which classroom management constituted a problem among pre-service foreign language teachers in a teacher education program at a public university in Colombia. The study also sought to identify classroom management challenges, the approaches to confronting them, and the…