According to the author, a teacher might both feed the soul and heed the voice of others. National Writing Project's (NWP) Summer Invitational Institute (SI) provides this opportunity. Since its first SI in 2007, Ozarks Writing Project (OWP), an NWP site at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, has been helping southwest Missouri…

At a time when deaf education teacher preparation programs are declining in number, little is known about their actual effectiveness. A phenomenological case study of a graduate-level comprehensive deaf education teacher preparation program at a midwestern university explored empowered and enabled learning of teacher candidates using the Missouri…

Many faculty and college instructors continue to be complacent with monocultural curricula, while interacting with students from diverse racial, ethnic, gender, social, and linguistic backgrounds. To assist these faculty to embrace diversity curriculum infusion, it is critical to scaffold the process for them. This article describes one…

In this article, the authors examine the effect of a National Writing Project professional development model on a group of middle school writing teachers. The authors examine how contact with other professionals in intensive week-long sessions as well as mentoring from the professional development coach affected the teachers’ concept of themselves…

This study examined possible relationships between teachers' perceived levels of empowerment in the workplace, teachers' perceived levels of responsibility for student learning, and levels of student success as measured by standardized achievement tests. Participants were a group of elementary classroom teachers from the southwest Missouri area…

To determine if governance structures affected perceptions of teacher empowerment, 55 teachers completed the Teacher Perception Survey. Subjects were from two matched Missouri elementary schools with differing organizational structures and administrative philosophies. Unlike the traditional model, an Accelerated School model strongly influenced…

Survey of 400 Missouri schools compared schools that use integrated curriculum (IC) with those that do not. Explores the extent and type of use of IC, how school principals rate IC success, differences between characteristics of schools that do and do not use IC, and teacher involvement and support across different school levels. Includes data…