The story of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in schools in Australia started in 1996 with the limited involvement of schools in the Australasian Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (AURISA) "GIS in schools" competition. AURISA is now known as the Spatial Science Institute (SSI) and is conducting the Spatial Technology…

"Despite its central role in real-world geography, the Geographic Information System (GIS) has had little uptake to date in School Geography." (Wiegand, 2001) This statement can be accurately applied to the author's current school setting and was the focus of her and her colleagues' case study, commenced in 2004 and continued into 2005.…

Few evidence-based instructional practices achieve large-scale use, often remaining only in the schools directly involved in their development. Research on scaling up effective educational practice often lacks sensitive measures of the practice's implementation and the required research protocol. This article describes how we used rate of…

In this paper, I identify how the child welfare challenges of Northern Ireland are partially similar to, and partially different from, those in the United States. To do so, I provide a discussion of current US child welfare legislation, critical prevailing themes, and observations regarding the similarities and differences with Northern Ireland…

The Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children is a professional association whose responsibility is to develop and disseminate standards of practice related to young children with special needs and their families. The intention is to identify practices that result in high-quality early intervention/early childhood…

Teacher beliefs are mediated and lived in the dialectic of teacher education and teacher practice. We reframe this dialectic of "teacher" preparation as "faculty" preparation, as many faculty are not prepared for the rigors of teaching, and most are not trained in the ethics of their profession. We propose a critical model of faculty development…

This article describes the difficult times for faculty members and others who are committed to academic freedom. Among a number of examples, the author presents the bills introduced by state legislatures across the country that aim to restrict faculty activity in the name of protecting student freedom. Such legislative initiatives use the language…

Some Grade 4 educators have expressed feelings of ineptitude regarding the support of ESL (English Second Language) learners with limited English proficiency as they do not know how to support these learners effectively. Their litany emphasises ESL educators' need for supportive and preventive intervention. A story-based Language Enrichment…

"Beyond Tracking" responds to the a sobering assessment of American high schools by delineating and promoting an innovative and well-defined notion of multiple pathways. The book's authors clearly distinguish their use of the term "multiple pathways" from any updated version of the tracking system that marked so many American high schools during…

The Untied Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Competency Standards for Teachers (ICT-CST) project aims to improve teachers' practice in all areas of their work, combining ICT skills with innovations in pedagogy, curriculum, and school organization. It is also aimed at…

When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in different municipalities at different points in time. Such…

The Polish school education system makes a distinction between two types of assessment: (1) Intra-school or internal assessment; and (2) External assessment. The idea of introducing external examinations into the Polish school education system emerged in 1992. This was directly inspired by study visits to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands…

The purpose of this case study is to describe the challenges one coach faced during the initial implementation of a coaching initiative involving 33 teachers in an urban, high-poverty elementary school. Reading coaches are increasingly expected to play a key role in the professional development efforts to improve reading instruction in order to…

The full-purpose partnership (FPP) schoolwide model primarily focuses on prevention and early intervention. This model brings the tenets of service coordination directly into the school and focuses efforts to involve families from a strengths perspective before behavioral issues become significant. A preliminary evaluation has shown that this…

The D.C. School Choice Incentive Act created the first private kindergarten-through-grade-12 school-choice program supported by federal funds. The program was named the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to assess the (1) accountability mechanisms governing the use of…