How do you see yourself as a trainer? Are you occasionally extraordinary, or do you flail about a bit? Are you connected to a helpful community of other trainers, or are you just starting out and feeling isolated and alone in your job? Do your workshops end with thunderous applause, or do you have nightmares about participants gazing into the…

A flipped classroom is one where students are first introduced to content outside of the classroom. This frees up class time for more active learning strategies and has been shown to enhance student learning in high school and college classrooms. However, many studies in General Chemistry, a college gateway science course, were conducted in small…

Recent research has confirmed that parental involvement in education is positively associated with student achievement, yet further efforts are needed to measure the effects of such programs systematically so as to inform the development of improved methods. Having parents help their children with mathematics can be problematic. Teachers may not…

The purpose of this study was to determine change in environmental education teaching efficacy beliefs of K-12 teachers who participated in two weeks of an intensive summer earth systems science institute using the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) curriculum as the conceptual framework. Thirty-eight teachers…

This paper summarizes the findings from a K-6 professional development program that emphasized scientific inquiry and nature of science within the theme of scientific modeling. During the 2-week summer workshop and follow up school year workshops, the instruction modeled a 5-E learning cycle approach. Pre and posttesting measured teachers' views…

Assessing student performance is one of the most critical aspects of the job of a classroom teacher; however, many teachers in the United States do not feel adequately prepared to assess their students' performance. These feelings of inadequacy are exemplified when placed against the context of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, especially with…

The nation's focus on the literacy skills of students--especially boys--has produced many notions of reform. School districts reorganized and changed curricula to meet the needs of struggling readers and writers. In New York City, where this author was teaching, "Balanced Literacy" (a reading and writing workshop) had been implemented in…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of a professional development (PD) program on teacher self-efficacy and classroom practice. Thirty-eight in-service teachers from a foundation school in Izmir participated in this study. Multiple sets of data for this study came from the Turkish teachers' sense of efficacy scale, classroom…

The purpose of this study was to provide a description of an on-site professional development program for Russian teachers as they learned to teach Sport Education. A concurrent objective was to investigate the effectiveness of this professional development opportunity. Participants were two physical education teachers (one with 27 and one with 3…

Adolescents are physically inactive and non-Caucasian adolescents achieve the least amount of physical activity. Hence, supporting teachers' efforts to increase their students' physical activity during physical education is important. We examined the influence of a social cognitive theory-based intervention on teachers' efficacy to teach…

We describe a workshop in which 10 teachers from 10 schools, located in central Israel, participated in the development of alternative assessment tools in the context of implementing a new science curriculum for senior high-school students, namely "Science for All" (an STS type curriculum). In order to assist a group of teachers (who…

Background: Following the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the NSW Premier, Mr Bob Carr, launched a school-based initiative in NSW government primary schools called the "Gold Medal Fitness Program" to encourage children to be fitter and more active. The Program was introduced into schools through a model of professional development, "Quality…

This study compared the efficacy of 3 approaches to professional development in middle school Earth science organized around the principles of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) in a sample of 53 teachers from a large urban district. Teachers were randomly assigned to a control group or to 1 of 3 conditions that varied with…

University researchers, teacher candidates, language and technology instructors, student learners, and families from diverse backgrounds partnered in an invitational teaching/learning experience--middle school student learners teaching their VIPs (very important persons) how to create stories and construct digital movies with reference to their…

The LOGO Project, funded by the Texas Education Agency, is designed to not only increase participants' knowledge of technology to teach mathematics but to enhance their self-efficacy and self-determination, or the beliefs that individuals have about their ability to succeed and their motivation for involvement in the task, as well. The purpose of…