Public school teachers are at the forefront of education in the United States; they must employ methods such as data-driven decision making (DDDM) to ensure that all students are learning. Quality decision making is vital in this age of accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that includes mandated state testing such as the…

This dissertation examines the lived experiences of white middle school teachers in predominantly white rural communities as they discuss race and race issues with students. Using methods of descriptive phenomenology, interviews were conducted with teachers to explore what it was like for them to talk about race in classrooms comprised of only…

Demographic changes within the US are bringing significant changes in the cultural make-up of the classrooms in our schools. Results from national and state assessments indicate a growing achievement gap between the science scores of white students and students from minority communities. This gap indicates a disconnect somewhere in the science…

The changing educational needs of undergraduate students have not been addressed with a corresponding development of instructional methods in higher education classrooms. This study used a phenomenological approach to investigate a classroom-based instructional model called the "inverted" or "flipped" classroom. The flipped…

Dramatic changes have occurred in the area of technology development and society's use of technology in daily life and the workplace. Yet in many classrooms, technology integration remains a significant challenge for educators, creating a digital disconnect that threatens to handicap students as they graduate and compete for jobs in the 21st…

Retaining highly qualified career and technical education teachers is important in maintaining and growing quality secondary career and technical education programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors contributing to teacher retention specifically in the area of career and technical education (CTE) and determine…

Autoethnography was used as a tool for white in-service elementary teachers to examine their racial identity from a Critical White Studies (CWS) perspective. Two white in-service teachers participated in two yearlong university courses focused on teaching linguistically and culturally diverse students. Each teacher collected their own data at…

In this article, the author reflects on on his role in preparing English teachers. Leading into his twelfth year concerned with the art and science of teaching English, he wondered what exactly he could say or do to help them stick their toes in some uncertain waters. What could he say of an educational context bent on holding people--different by…

Unlike predecessor Michelle Rhee, Chancellor Kaya Henderson of the District of Columbia Public Schools works to balance accountability with collegiality. Kaya Henderson's childhood in one of New York's most affluent areas, Westchester County, could not have been more different from that of the middle school students she taught at Lola Rodriguez…

This study examined the factor structure of the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) using the scores of pre-service teachers at the beginning stage of teacher development to gather internal structure score validity evidence. Two plausible rival models derived from prior research were tested using CFA.…

With an increase in the number of learners and speakers of English as an additional language entering the English language teaching field, especially in Outer and Expanding Circle countries and some migrating into the Inner Circle countries (e.g., Jenkins, 2009), there is an urgent need to prepare, and understand the experiences of, English…

Recent reforms in mathematics education have increased the need for teachers to attend professional development programs. In order to motivate teachers to attend such programs and to maximize their effect on teachers' development, we believe it is important to adapt the contents of such programs to teachers' perceived needs. The current study was…

This article examines what both in-service and pre-service trainee teachers learn from their early experience of teaching in further education (FE) colleges in England. Despite differences between in-service and pre-service trainees, that early experience is often characterised by isolation and lack of control over practice for both groups.…

The simple gesture of a home visit--where the focus will be on the child and not on academics or classroom behavior--pays huge dividends, say teachers. A teacher who has met a student's parents in their home is better equipped to reach that child and keep him or her on track through the year. Home visits are common, if not mandatory, in charter…

High on any Top 10 list of the most frequent advice offered to young faculty members is this: No good deed goes unpunished. The aphorism at first seems cynical, pessimistic, dysfunctional. Doing good, as members of a higher-education community, is their job. What if everyone just looked out for No. 1? The entire promotion-and-tenure system--which…