The Schoolwide Positive Behavior Intervention Support model (SWPBIS) continues to gain widespread use across schools in the United States and abroad. Despite its widespread implementation, little research has examined factors that influence its sustainability. Informed by Rogers's diffusion theory, this study examined school personnel's…

The current study explores how principals (n = 568) experience a new teacher evaluation model under Race to the Top. Findings suggest that principals felt the least confident in their ability to identify teacher behaviors associated with student achievement gains and placed the least value on student achievement data. Evaluation experience…

Program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change, are dispositions that influence physical education teacher change. The study purpose was to validate an instrument measuring program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change relative to teachers' likelihood to change. A 15-item Teacher Change…

The shortage of teachers in Illinois is reflective of a recent trend where agricultural education graduates of in-state post-secondary institutions have not met the need for the number of available teaching positions. The retirement of the many teachers from the Baby Boomer generation is looming over the profession, making recruitment efforts…

In this study, we conducted binary logistic regression on survey data collected from 244 past participants of a Talent Search program who attended regular high schools but supplemented their regular high school education with enriched or accelerated math and science learning activities. The participants completed an online survey 4 to 6 years…

Teachers' ratings of conflict and closeness as well as observed emotional support are known predictors of children's social functioning. Consistency in emotional support represents an emerging line of research. The goal of the present study is to understand whether the relation between the consistency of teachers' emotional support and children's…

Students (N = 160) in three diverse FFA chapters were surveyed in early fall, midwinter, and late spring in regard to their leadership skills, confidence in leading, and motivation to engage in leadership-oriented behaviors. The results indicated small-to-moderate gains in transformational leadership skill and a marginally significant…

The use of dual credit has been expanding rapidly. Dual credit is a college course taken by a high school student for which both college and high school credit is given. Previous studies provided limited quantitative evidence that dual credit/dual enrollment is directly connected to positive student outcomes. In this study, predictive statistics…

This large-scale, longitudinal study examines teacher attrition data from over 6,500 teachers in Illinois over a 14-year period from 1997 to 2010. Attrition rates between teachers who participated in a Professional Development School (PDS) versus students prepared traditionally are compared. The effects of teacher preparation experiences on…

The present study examines school professionals' self-reported perceptions of readiness in relation to the implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI) following a mandated deadline across the state of Illinois, as well their beliefs about the framework. A survey was developed to measure variables in the model related to school professionals'…

Three self-paced reading experiments examined the effect of context on interpreting subsequent sentences and in the difficulty of revising initial misinterpretations of subsequent temporarily ambiguous sentences. Target sentences containing noun phrase/sentence (NP/S) coordination ambiguities were preceded by contexts that either did or did not…

The role of adolescents' disclosure to their parents in their academic adjustment was examined in a study of 825 American and Chinese adolescents (mean age = 12.73 years). Four times over the seventh and eighth grades, adolescents reported on their spontaneous disclosure of everyday activities to their parents, the quality of their relationships…

Research Findings: This study examines the theory of change of the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), testing a sequence of theory-derived mediating mechanisms that include the quality of teacher-child relationships and children's self-regulation. The CSRP is a multicomponent teacher and classroom-focused intervention, and its…

The ESEA Blueprint for Reform states that teachers need "effective, ongoing, job-embedded, professional development that is targeted to student and school needs… [and] aligned with evidence of improvements in student learning." Unfortunately, the professional development approaches advocated, though sensible and compelling in theory,…

This report, the fourth in an IERC series on public school principals in Illinois, summarizes recent research on the characteristics associated with principal effectiveness and examines Illinois data on the relationship between principal characteristics, student proficiency, and teacher qualifications. In order to investigate the relationships…