This study aimed to discover the perspectives and experiences of elementary school teachers in rural southeast Tennessee regarding their collaborative efforts to effectively implement data-driven instruction for individual student success. The research problem is that the current collaboration efforts for teachers to implement data-driven…

New teachers felt unprepared as they entered their first year of teaching and were leaving the teaching field at a high rate every school year. Tennessee, like many other states, had a critical shortage of secondary mathematics teachers. Secondary mathematics has been considered a high-needs subject area. New teacher induction programs were…

The problem addressed in this qualitative study is the rise in teacher job dissatisfaction and low rates of retention, which has resulted in a significant increase in teacher vacancies in school districts across the United States. The purpose of this study was to describe and understand the lived experiences of early-career secondary teachers with…

Policy implementation research indicates that local contexts and school factors shape how teacher collaboration efforts are implemented in schools. By evaluating a statewide teacher collaboration initiative in Tennessee known as the Instructional Partnership Initiative (IPI), this article provides insight on the school-level factors that are…

Policy implementation research indicates that local contexts and school factors shape how teacher collaboration efforts are implemented in schools. By evaluating a statewide teacher collaboration initiative in Tennessee known as the Instructional Partnership Initiative (IPI), this article provides insight on the school level factors that are…

The problem addressed in this study was that most opportunities for professional learning in the field of education have been created and assigned without the teacher giving input through a needs assessment. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand the experiences of veteran K-5 teachers who participated in an online…

While high-stakes testing has influenced music teacher evaluation, evidence of music teacher agency influencing the policy process has been scarce. One notable exception is the Tennessee Fine Arts Portfolio Model (TNFAPM), designed by music teachers in Tennessee as an alternative to music teacher evaluations that have been based, at least in part,…

Background: Collaboration among teachers is now considered a marker of effective schools and key to creating successful professional learning opportunities. However, the nature and efficacy of collaboration vary widely, and research suggests that collaborative efforts often fail to promote teacher development. Purpose: This study draws on…

The purpose of this study was to provide an examination of the relationships between general education teachers, special education teachers, and paraprofessionals and the influences of these relationships on students with disabilities. This study was conducted through the process of semistructured interviews with general education teachers,…

Teachers of color often work in schools with few colleagues from the same racial or ethnic background. This "racial isolation" may affect their work experiences and important job outcomes, including retention. Using longitudinal administrative and survey data, we investigate the degree to which Tennessee teachers who are more racially…

A qualitative investigation was conducted to explore teacher perceptions of Professional Learning Communities on the instructional climate at Flintville Elementary School in Lincoln County, Tennessee. Participants in the study included five teachers, the evaluation supervisor, and one parent from Flintville Elementary School. Through the analysis…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model in its first year of implementation in 66 schools across the U.S. and to document scale-up progress during the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant period (2017-2021). The impact evaluation included 21,529 9th grade students…

Research shows that effective teachers are one of the most important in-school contributors to student learning. To improve low-income minority students' access to effective teaching, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative in the 2009-2010 school year. The program was…

In 2018, The RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) published an evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative, which was designed to improve achievement among low-income minority (LIM) students. The initiative provided support for several reforms that…

This design case will introduce how collective design intentions shared by a group of three program faculty for an online Instructional Technology (IT) Master's program at the University of Tennessee (UT) were collaboratively identified and further acted upon within the context of the first course in the program. The course that is the focus of…