The National Wildlife Federation and AISD engaged in a project to build outdoor learning classrooms on middle school and elementary school campuses. Teachers participated in a half-day Appreciative Inquiry Summit during the second year of the partnership. This report describes teachers' reflections and aspirations for the Schoolyard Habitats they…

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the effect of mentor teachers' leadership practices on student interns' efficacious beliefs in Professional Development Schools (PDSs) during the internship practicum. The study employed the Leadership Practices Inventory (Kouzes & Posner, 2003) to measure the transformational leadership…

Educational disparities between indigenous Maori students and those of the majority continue to be a major issue in New Zealand. Te Kotahitanga, an iterative research and development programme, which commenced in 2001, supports teachers to implement a relationship-based pedagogy in their classrooms in order to improve Maori students' achievement…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Digital Backpack program in a Northern New Jersey School District using the CIPP Management-Based Evaluation model as a framework. The Stufflebeam (1971) CIPP model is an acronym for Context, Input, Process, and Product Evaluation. A "Digital Backpack" is a rolling computer bag given to K-12…

Teachers who choose to participate in professional development to acquire new instructional methods or enhance their content knowledge are teacher-learners. For this study, data consisted of the reflective writings of 19 secondary mathematics and science teacher-learners in an 11-month professional development project. These writings provided a…

Teacher retention is an important issue which can influence the delivery of quality education. However, only a few factors have been identified in the area of career and technical education that may influence teacher retention. The purpose of this study was to identify specific factors that may influence the retention of trade and industrial…

This study examined the relationships among academic enablers (i.e., engagement, interpersonal skills, motivation, study skills) and academic achievement in children with and without high levels of parent-rated symptoms of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity (Symptoms of IIH Group). The study included 69 participants (29 [42%] in the IIH…

This report focuses on the opening of new school libraries and their impact on schools, teachers and students after two years of implementation of the Baltimore Elementary and Middle School Library Project (Library Project). The findings build on the first report of this project and show that it is not just new facilities, but also the added…

The rapid growth in the student population observed in higher education over the past 10-15 years in some countries has coincided with an increased recognition of student engagement and its value in developing knowledge. Active learning approaches have the potential to promote student engagement with lectures, but this becomes more challenging as…

This paper argues that the concepts, beliefs and understandings of local and non-local teacher educators in a Hong Kong university are grounded in their own cultural cognition and antecedents. It presents the viewpoint that contemporary notions of good practice were compromised when applied to a context that is strongly influenced by the tenets of…

Many students at an urban vocational high school have failed to pass the mathematics section of the New Jersey high school graduation assessment. Students who fail the graduation assessment are in danger of not earning their high school diploma. The purpose of this study was to learn, from the instructors' perspectives, why students were not…

Research shows low-income students suffer disproportionate learning loss over the summer and because those losses accumulate over time, they contribute substantially to the achievement gap between low- and higher-income children. The Wallace Foundation is funding a five-year demonstration project to examine whether summer learning programs can…

The context and nature of teacher efficacy beliefs provide a method upon which to explore science teachers' perceptions of their teaching effectiveness and student achievement as a function of ethnicity. Promotion of a more in-depth knowledge of science teaching efficacy requires cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations. In this study, a…

Becoming a culturally responsive educator has been at the forefront of the movement to reduce inappropriate referrals to special education and disproportionate representation of students of color within special education. However, for many educators, working with a diverse student population can be more difficult when the student comes from a…

This study investigated the relations between teachers' pedagogical beliefs and students' self-reported engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures. Participants were the biology, geography, and German teachers of 46 classes (Grades 5-8) and their students. Teachers' instructional behaviors and students' engagement in learning…