The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study is to explore how teachers describe the process of creating lesson plans that use drama-based instruction (DBI) in the classroom to engage students as well as how they describe their experience using DBI in the classroom to engage students. Fourteen teachers located in the state of Florida…

COVID-19 presented educators with a quick transition to virtual teaching. The problem was that secondary teachers in southwest Florida had to overcome obstacles, including preparedness, to teach successfully using different modalities during the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research on this topic is important because teachers' perceptions will…

This Educator Voices report examines the working conditions that impact educator practice and well-being in center-based programs in Flagler and Volusia Counties, Florida. The study documents the experiences of early educators since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and is the first to look at the relationship between educators' future plans and…

This Educator Voices report examines the working conditions that impact educator practice and well-being in center-based programs in Flagler and Volusia Counties, Florida. The study documents the experiences of early educators since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and is the first to look at the relationship between educators' future plans and…

Novice Teacher Experiences of Online Reading Instruction During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Deyanira Candales, 2023: Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. Keywords: novice teachers, reading, online instruction, elementary school, virtual learning, distance learning,…

This qualitative, thematic analysis explores the emergent themes related to community college professors' experiences adopting and using technology during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews included semi-structured questions (i.e., closed- and open-ended) to elicit themes related to the professors' adoption and use of…

Writing is an essential life skill. It is a critical area of literacy instruction and high-stakes assessments. However, emphasis on writing instruction and assessment has not correlated with widespread writing proficiency. Within this context, teachers experience the phenomenon of writing instructional leadership. Teachers' preparation as writers…

Since the spring of 2020, many early childhood education programs (pre-K, K, 1st, and 2nd grades) had to close as governments around the world took serious measures to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. As a result, the pandemic forced many early childhood teachers to start teaching online and continue supporting their students remotely.…

In this article, three English Language Arts teachers draw on their teaching experiences of addressing sexual violence in assigned young adult literature. The authors use their experiences to guide a series of suggestions for other teachers who wish to teach these texts in their own classes. First, the authors offer suggestions for legitimizing…

This constructivist study investigates and captures the lived experiences of three social studies educators as they make sense of civic education in a climate of high stakes testing and accountability. In spite of the deterioration of civic education over the years (Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, 2011), Florida was among the first…

To address the needs of English Language Leaners (ELLs) in grade-level content-area classrooms, teacher education programs are moving toward "infused" models of instruction where preservice general education courses include ELL-specific content. Little is known about how this curricular change is accomplished. To address this gap, this…

In this article, we discuss three cross-cultural memoirs used in three different university courses that introduced students to the complex identities that form both inside and outside of language classrooms. In arguing for the value of using such memoirs as content in university courses, we provide a detailed thematic analysis of Peter Hessler's…

Multi-age classrooms feature the intentional grouping of students from consecutive grade levels for the purpose of fostering a nurturing classroom atmosphere. While an abundance of research on multi-age education has been produced throughout the past 50 years, only recent efforts have seen researchers turn their attention to the experiences of art…

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that…

The purpose of this investigation was to understand how teachers' perceptions of how they changed during the initial years of teaching. Three middle and three high school teachers viewed thirty minutes of their internship video and answered seven open-ended teacher related questions during a telephone interview. All participants had at least three…