Even under ideal conditions, teaching is tough work. Facing unrelenting pressure from administrators and parents and caught in a race against time to improve student outcomes, educators can easily become discouraged (or worse, burn out completely) without a robust coaching system in place to support them. For more than 20 years, perfecting such a…

Improving Social and Emotional Learning in Primary Schools reviews the best available research to offer school leaders six practical recommendations to support good SEL for all children. It stresses this is especially important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and other vulnerable groups, who, on average, have weaker SEL skills at all…

This report illustrates how four high-performing systems--British Columbia (Canada), Hong Kong, Shanghai (China) and Singapore--developed their teacher professional learning. The report and accompanying materials are designed as a resource for teachers, school leaders and policymakers wanting to improve teacher professional learning in their…

To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Denver Public Schools (DPS) took to design and implement its Differentiated Roles pilot. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of…

As pre-service instructors, we turned to longitudinal study of our graduates as a primary means of finding out how our courses could better prepare student teachers for the challenging early years of teaching. In addition, we used other self-study methods, notably regular feedback from student teachers during the program. The study of 22 graduates…

Concerns with teacher education extend to program quality, professional credibility, and utilization of research. This article suggests that university- and school-based teacher educators increase their role in research utilization and development activities and establish school-university networks to sustain these efforts. (DF)

Interscholastic competition is an excellent means for showcasing social studies for students, parents, and the local community. Described is a social studies tournament as designed by one high school. Specifically discussed are tournament divisions, format, content, team selection and composition, instrument preparation and scoring, tournament…

The "Handbook of Youth Prevention Science" describes current research and practice in mental health preventive interventions for youth. Traditional prevention research focused on preventing specific disorders, e.g. substance abuse, conduct disorders, or criminality. This produced "silos" of isolated knowledge about the…

Discussed are a review of related literature, a review of other programs, a survey to determine the actual learning environment of the other programs, a review of student demographics, the group decision process (a Delphi exercise), and the evaluation of the program components. (CW)

The Tulsa Technology Center's Curriculum Department led the institution's staff in developing a competency-based occupational curriculum for the district. The process of curriculum development involved planning, developing, implementing, and evaluating the instruction within the district. The process was designed to provide a total district…

The ongoing process of developing new academic programs is slow, and the process by which this gradual reshaping occurs involves all aspects of the institution of higher education. The overlap of innovation in organizations, strategic planning, and program evaluation is important in this development. Administrators, trustees, and faculty members…

School communities feel pressure to dramatically improve the educational experience of students and principals are confronted with the need to lead their staff and community in examining current practice and implementing changes that respond to these demands. Leading school change is one of the most complex tasks faced by a school leader. The…

New Jersey is one of fifteen states selected by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to receive a planning and implementation grant for setting a reform agenda for a series of state policies that are designed to improve educational leadership and student learning. Under this grant, the State Action for Education Leadership Project (SAELP)…

The objectives of the workshop were to discuss the need for staff development in African universities, explore various means to improve teaching and learning, prepare an outline to set up centers in universities to cater to the needs of staff development, and outline a basic approach for establishing a continental committee to coordinate and…

The Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools' Vocational Education Exemplary Project provided support for the establishment of critical linkages among all vocational delivery systems in the metropolitan Nashville area. The anticipated outcome of the project was an articulation model to ensure that instruction and guidance would allow students to (1)…