States, districts, and schools all across the United States are busy developing or implementing teacher evaluation systems. One can trace this flurry of activity to a variety of reports and initiatives that highlight two failings of past efforts: (1) Teacher evaluation systems have not accurately measured teacher quality because they've failed to…

This article details the findings from a qualitative study that explored the ways individuals who work with early childhood education (ECE) practitioners in professional development settings influenced those practitioners' understandings of early childhood policy and early childhood systems. Defined as individuals who work in the professional…

This fall, the nine states that finished as runners up in last year's groundbreaking Race to the Top competition will have an opportunity to reapply for a grant. The winners will receive a combined $200 million to help implement the bold education reform plans they developed last year. Many of the eligible states already have clear roadmaps toward…

While the literature on professional learning communities (PLCs) has proliferated, much of it derived from and contextualised in Anglo-American settings, the concept and practice of PLCs in Asian contexts of strong hierarchies have largely been ignored. Based on literature and documentary analysis, this paper investigates the systemic…

This study took place in the United States and explored teacher perspectives on the situational factors that influence their professional development using Engestrom's (Engestrom, Y. (1987). "Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research". Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy) four levels of inner contradictions in…

The higher vocational and professional specialty of "construction management" of China begun late, and the talent training mode of various colleges are different, especially the analysis to the specialty ability modules on the higher vocational and professional layer is not mature. In this article, combining with the practice of Manjing…

Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional "people work" requires a certain interactive closeness; face-to-face communication is prominent in professional-client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the "raison d'etre" of this profession.…

Status quo approaches to teacher evaluation have recently come under increasing criticism. They typically assign most teachers the highest available score, provide minimal feedback for improvement, and have little connection with student achievement growth and the quality of instruction that leads to higher student growth. A more comprehensive…

With the expansion in publicly funded prekindergarten programs across the country, a number of policy initiatives are aiming to bring these various providers of preschool services together to create coordinated systems of early care and education. This article reports the findings of a focus group study with stakeholders at all levels of the…

The quality of education provided by the public sector in Pakistan has been poor due to low levels of teacher competence, lack of classroom-based support for teachers, poor quality of textbooks and learning materials, lack of systems to assess student learning outcomes, uneven supervision, insufficient resources for critical teaching and learning…