Educator leadership requires continuous development, including extended professional learning opportunities for principals in the field. This is also true for district leaders who likely have even fewer robust opportunities to grow professionally. We conducted a comparative interrupted time series of publicly available student achievement data…

In 2003, the Texas State Legislature enacted the Texas Success Initiative (TSI). Upon entering a postsecondary institution, non-exempt students are tested using the TSI Assessment. A student's scores are used to assist Texas public institutions of higher education in determining if students are prepared for introductory college coursework in the…

Purpose: Adaptivity has long been recognized as a key aspect of teaching and shown to be particularly important for English Language Arts (ELA) teachers leading discussions about texts. Teachers' abilities to make such adjustments are especially important when facilitating discussions in digital contexts, as was made clear with the shift to…

Preparation and professional development can help principals be more effective leaders, but little research has examined what specific approaches are most useful. A study of 462 California principals and the teachers and students in their schools shows that high-quality preservice preparation for principals is associated with stronger teacher…

A growing body of research points to the substantial influence of principals on school conditions and students' learning. But how can principals learn to be good leaders? And are there professional learning strategies that make a difference in principal effectiveness? This study, which is part of a larger project synthesizing the research on…

Considering the critical need to support students' mental health and wellbeing, this article outlines a standards-based approach that integrates flourishing within a high school English/Language Arts classroom and supports clinical practice and professional development in a professional development school (PDS). Using the book, "The Bean…

This critical case study (Grosvenor & Pataki, 2017; Merriam, 2009) examines how taking up diversity and plurality within in situ literacy and language arts courses in a Bachelor of Education program created a critical discursive space within mainstream teacher education. Data in this research included interviews with teacher candidates and…

The absence of social studies curriculum is a problem because it undermines the essential purposes of schooling: to prepare participatory, contributing members of a democratic society. In this article, we argue that integrating the literacy and social studies curricula is one meaningful way to support such civic-minded social studies instruction…

This work underscores how English Language Arts (ELA) faculty and school administrators in middle schools can partner with area colleges and universities to mine available data generated from high stakes writing assessments, and to answer teachers' questions about students' attitudes to writing. We first discuss the nature of the writing…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a roadmap of one way to use professional development school (PDS)-university relationships to create the foundations of sustainable inclusive education practices. This paper outlines PDS practices enacted the first year of a project that took place at a public elementary school that serves students in grades…

The study of a middle school social studies project this article addresses occurred in the national capital region of the United States, where perceptions of ''patriotism'' and xenophobic immigration policies were the subjects of frequent media reports. With this examination the authors considered the overarching research question ''How do middle…

The need for culturally responsive teachers in an increasingly diverse educational system is paramount. The purpose of this study was to investigate preservice teachers' developing understandings of culturally responsive pedagogy in a language arts methods class over the course of one semester. The study also sought to explore the…

In order to systemically improve student achievement in elementary literacy, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to develop a model for high-quality professional development that hopefully would result in long-term changes in teachers' literacy instructional/practices. Schools were selected based on their Adequate…

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to identify the need for educators' use of lesson study as a professional learning community to increase communication between colleagues. Lesson study is considered a form of professional development in that, educator colleagues work with one another to plan, implement, critique, and revise a lesson…

High attrition rates among new teachers are of concern to teacher educators. Support mechanisms may help teachers feel less isolated in their new profession. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies can connect novice teachers in ways that are both time and place independent. Most research on asynchronous online discussions has focused…