The COVID-19 pandemic created a historic, global disruption in the labor market. In the short term, the labor force participation rate dropped precipitously as workers were laid off or furloughed, especially in sectors that were most affected by social distancing protocols, such as hospitality, travel and leisure, and retail (Lund et al., 2021).…

In this essay, we offer two personal narratives of how we innovated in our approaches to teaching and learning--our pedagogical epiphanies. The first narrative, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, focuses on innovating and moving from the use of a single learning process to the use of a portfolio of learning approaches that align with the learning…

Grounded in Developmental Systems Theory, especially Ecological Systems Theory, and through the strength-based and whole child lenses, this study examines 15 interviews with Head Start professionals and explores alignment degree of their school readiness perception and practices. Adopting dual mapping, theme screening and in vivo coding, the…

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), together with the Region 10 Comprehensive Center (R10CC), conducted a survey of educators in Minnesota public schools to better understand which schools are implementing competency-based education (CBE) practices and to learn more about their goals, successes, and challenges. These insights will help…

In fall 2013, The Teagle Foundation issued an RFP inviting selected institutions and organizations to apply for grants that addressed the following question: "How can faculty work together to create a more coherent and intentional curriculum whose goals, pathways, and outcomes are clear to students and other constituencies with a stake in the…

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) recently released standards to guide the practice of school librarians. The "National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries" (2018) were put forward as a single text with integrated frameworks. One year later, the "ALA/AASL/CAEP School…

Despite the growing number of researches about performance-based accountability (PBA) in education, there is still scarce evidence on the mediating role of subjective variables (e.g., perceived pressure and alignment to PBA mandates) in the enactment of PBA in socially disadvantaged contexts. This is paradoxical because marginalized schools are…

Do federal policies influence program offerings for career and technical education (CTE)? Often the implication of compliance and the expectation of connecting compliance to funding is considered a tactic to leverage expectations on a large scale. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if the CTE programs located in a singular…

This study assesses the impact of a 2-year virtual coaching program on teacher and student outcomes. The program - Feedback on Alignment and Support for Teachers (FAST) - was intended to deepen teachers' understanding of their state's standards and improve the alignment of their instruction with the standards. Relying on a multisite school-level…

The George Mason University (Mason) offices responsible for institutional reporting and assessment were merged to strengthen and solidify their functions and expertise. The organizational structure creating the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning (OIEP) was intended to engineer a new paradigm where assessment would inform the…

Constructive alignment, as a less examined issue in the English language learning context, is a technique to align learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment based on the competencies that learners need to achieve. This study examined whether teaching academic paragraph writing in a virtual flipped classroom according to the…

In preparing undergraduates to become teachers, initial teacher education (ITE) institutions enter into partnerships with schools, a necessary but often ambiguous undertaking. Alignment or misalignment of the key roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder influences pre-service teachers' experience of teaching practice. The overarching…

Public school districts play a pivotal role in the well-being of rural communities. To help mitigate the impact of labor market trends, societal shifts, and the skilled labor shortage, rural schools are in the initial stages of expanding innovative career pathways. As such, career and technical education (CTE) administrators serve their rural…

This article offers articulation theory as a tool for listening and thinking about the culture in and around writing centers. After defining a method of articulation analysis that considers articulation, disarticulation, and rearticulation, as well as alignments, contradictions, and tensions within a context, the article performs an articulation…

We examined the impact of secondary Career and Technical Education (CTE) credit-taking on students attaining full-time employment following graduation from high school in the United States, and whether such credit-taking impacted students entering employment in a related field. We focused on occupational programs, and we used four levels of CTE…