High school academic departments remain under-examined yet powerful entities in American high schools. High status department leaders create and sustain narratives around teaching and learning, disciplinary-specific best practices, and the overall efficacy and effectiveness of any number of school improvement policies and initiatives promoted by…

This book contributes extensively to a better understanding of how vocational education and training (VET) and practice-based learning and teaching is developed and designed. It presents examples of vocational education as an ongoing dialogue, continually refreshed through engagement between educators and learners, Maori, employers, industry, and…

A comprehensive high school in Bellevue, Washington, embraces problem-based learning as its strategy for improvement. Supported by a federal i3 grant, the school spent five years preparing for a widespread launch of PBL at the school. After several years of implementation, researchers learned that students perform the same or better on…

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the introduction, implementation, evolution, hybridization, and initial research into the constructivist instructional models deployed within a secondary (high) school in Australia. A concomitant aim is to relate some of the consequences of whole school pedagogical change, which have included the…

This book represents a crop of wide-ranging research conducted by renown scholars in sub-Sahara Africa revolving around mathematics teaching and professional development programs for mathematics teachers. The research-based proposals and actual how-to-conduct professional development initiatives that enhance effective mathematics instruction are…

This study examined the longitudinal effects of a middle school reform mathematics curriculum on students' open-ended problem solving in high school. Using assessment data from a large, longitudinal project, we compared the open-ended problem-solving performance and strategy use of high school students who had used the Connected Mathematics…

"Seizing the Future: How Ohio's Career and Technical Education Programs Fuse Academic Rigor and Real-World Experiences to Prepare Students for College and Work," demonstrates Ohio's progress in developing strong policies for career and technical education (CTE) programs to promote rigor, including college- and career-ready graduation…

Through this paper we try to convey the necessity to provide the workforce with a labor force that is academically and technologically ready to meet the 21st century global demands. We feel this is accomplished by providing the students at MBIT [Middle Bucks Institute of Technology] with industry-standard equipment, academic and technology…

Successful strategies for incorporating engineering design challenges into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in American high schools are presented in this paper. The developers have taken the position that engineering design experiences should be an important component of the high school education of all American…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a constructivist method of instruction aligned with the science educational reform movement to increase scientific literacy for all Americans. As such, PBL instruction is an increasingly popular topic for professional development workshops offered to teachers in secondary learning environments. This research…

A problematic trend in the nature of work in educational settings has been the declining emphasis on a professional orientation to work and a growing emphasis on more technocratic approaches. This international trend has led to increased attention on skills and competencies and lessened attention to values, beliefs, motivations, energy, and…

The professional learning community (PLC) model for enacting school improvement through ameliorated educator leadership efficacy and instructional proficiencies has become one of the most popular methods for encouraging higher student achievement in public schools across the State of Missouri. By reviewing the current educational research on the…

On March 13, 2009, Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska, an eminent leader in gifted education, was presented with a Festschrift, a volume of articles submitted by colleagues as well as former and current graduate students to celebrate her life's work and influence on the field. This volume is a free supplement from The College of William and Mary's Center…

Schools are raising standards to improve academic and technical achievement and intellectual growth for all groups of students, particularly at-risk students. This newsletter contains tools and strategies that school leaders and teachers are using successfully to help students meet higher expectations. It organizes the techniques into five…

Today's high school graduates are entering a world in which they will need at least some college to gain access to decent-paying careers, according to the 2007 edition of "Diplomas Count." Those without even a high school diploma will face increasingly bleak labor-market prospects. This report, "Ready for What? Preparing Students…