According to Jim Knight, learning something new--such as a new instructional approach or other innovation--and applying it in practice is complex and involves adaptations that take time. Knight describes the five stages he believes people go through in learning and practicing any innovation, from "non-use," gradually up to the stage of…

This mixed methods study followed an explanatory sequential design to explore the formation, development, and evolution of a formal online teacher community of practice (CoP). The online CoP supported 382 teachers as they implemented the instructional conversation (IC) pedagogy, a collaborative conversation-based pedagogy for culturally and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the variation in methods used to analyse lessons in order to improve teaching and learning. Design/methodology/approach: It addresses the question of how observations of lessons can be analysed, and what approaches and methods are applicable in the analysis of collected data in lesson and learning…

In the context of a weeklong summer professional development program focused on climate change education, we conducted a qualitative case study investigating how science educators' understandings of learning progressions (LPs) informed their ideas about climate change teaching practice. Participants (N = 27) in the Climate Academy were middle…

Given the wide range of ability (academic, linguistic and cultural) in classrooms differentiated instruction is often difficult to manage. District and building level leadership can play an important role by providing the vision and support needed to implement Whole School Cluster Grouping (WSCG), the innovative scheduling approach described in…

In this article, the author explains how a writing center can be a potential host for housing writing instruction across the disciplines. She recommends writing centers act as hosts for various faculty development opportunities throughout the semester, and states that these centers can also hold faculty development resources and collaborative…

Educational evaluation (Ed Eval) and professional learning communities (PLCs) are two of the nation's most predominant approaches to widespread instructional improvement. Yet key attributes of these reform initiatives are too often experienced by teachers as burdensome, or even detrimental, rather than helpful. The authors of this article contend…

Despite historic and ongoing support for the inclusion of improvisation in the elementary general music curriculum, music educators consistently report challenges with implementation of improvisational activities in their classes. This study was designed to examine (a) the extent to which improvisational activities were occurring in the…

This research study examined whether and how professional development can help teachers design sequences of instruction that lead to improved science learning. The efficacy of three professional development programs and a control condition was compared in a cluster randomized trial involving 53 middle school science teachers from a single school…

This article is written from our perspective as both researchers and mathematics teacher educators, and describes how our knowledge has grown as we engage concurrently in both teaching and research. Reflection-on-action is a means for us of approaching the relationship between theory and practice that comes out of the development of our work as…

A Number of good ideas can help improve the achievement of low-performing students and close the achievement gap, including determining the placement of veteran teachers, purchasing new curricula, and providing after-school tutoring. However, it is the teacher--and what the teacher does in the classroom--that makes the most difference for…

As online professional development courses for teachers have grown, the discussion forum has become a locus of considerable research. This study analyzes the discussion forums in four different sessions of a short (4-week) online course for teachers from six schools in three states. This study also compares four methodologies, all of which have a…

This article describes a writing-across-the-curriculum project that was born of one university's commitment to writing and ubiquitous computing. Faculty members across the disciplines, seeing an opportunity to re-introduce WAC on its campus through a curriculum development initiative funded out of an internal teaching, learning, and technology…

Mel Levine writes about learning disabilities in a way that sometimes invites satire. The premise of his 2003 book, "The Myth of Laziness," for example, is that a child who appears lazy probably does not lack motivation, but rather suffers from "output failure." Levine, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North…

This article suggests that a genuine reform endeavor towards the "Science for All" paradigm should adopt a holistic approach. There are several countries around the world that adopted the "Science for All" paradigm at the beginning of the 21st century. However, while looking closely at the amount of change that took place in…