Part of Austin Independent School District (AISD)'s ongoing commitment to employees' well-being and retention includes understanding employees' feelings toward their work environment. AISD's customer experience department, CARES (customer focused, action oriented, responsive, empathetic, and service driven), worked with AISD's Department of…

A conceptual model on OER adoption is presented, as the substantive theoretical synthesis of a Grounded Theory study, whose purpose was to identify which factors influence the adoption of OER among teachers in Latin American universities. Main theoretical-methodological bases are rooted and analised, in comparison with the traditional approach…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide research project involving schools and students in over 79 countries. It is run by the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development], takes place every three years, and is designed to examine how 15-year-olds can apply what they have learned in school to real…

We present considerations for validity when a population outside of a normed sample is assessed and those data are interpreted. Using a career group counseling example exploring life satisfaction changes as evidenced by the Quality of Life Inventory (Frisch, 1994), we showcase qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore how normative data…

This article discusses the accessibility of two content management systems, Berkeley Electronic Press's Digital Commons and OCLC's CONTENTdm, widely used in libraries to host institutional repository and digital collections content. Based on observations by a visually impaired student who used the JAWS screen reader to view the design and display…

Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours. There have been many recent efforts to improve teacher voice in charter schools (Kahlenberg…

A recent survey by MetLife explores the opinions and experiences of principals and teachers at K-12 public schools regarding their responsibilities and challenges as leaders, the changing role of principals, faculty satisfaction, and Common Core Standards implementation. The findings of this study present independent schools with an opportunity to…

This research brief highlights findings from the full report (published separately), describing how many teachers transferred or changed jobs in AISD, remained at their schools, or left the school district after the 2013-2014 school year, along with characteristics of teachers in each group. A separate executive summary also was published. [For…

There are substantial differences in happiness in nations. Average happiness on scale 0-10 ranges in 2006 from 3.24 in Togo to 8.00 in Denmark and the inequality of happiness, as measured by the standard deviation, ranges from 0.85 in Laos to 3.02 in the Dominican Republic. Much of these differences are due to quality of governance and in…

As individuals become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, their virtual selves increasingly overlap their "real" lives. Posting a "happy birthday!" message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as…

Drawing on the University of Massachusetts experience in developing successful blended local programs, this paper suggests guiding principles that include mission-driven responsiveness to local contexts and partnerships; using low-cost marketing strategies available through local relationships and brand; attending to students' preferences for…

Last fall, Saint Louis University participated in St. Louis, Missouri's, first Human Capital Performance Study alongside several of the region's largest for-profit employers. The university also participated this year in the benchmarking of employee engagement factors conducted by the St. Louis Business Journal in its effort to quantify and select…

This report presents findings from a study of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccaulaureate Achievement (McNair) Program. The McNair Program was established in 1986 to increase the attainment of doctoral degrees by students from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. This study is a descriptive analysis of participant outcomes: no attempt is…

The development of a 20-item semantic differential assessment instrument for measuring student attitudes toward the subject of chemistry is described (Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory-ASCI). Instrument subscales and survey items pertain to interest and utility, anxiety, intellectual accessibility, emotional satisfaction, and…

Examines the role of human resource development (HRD), job satisfaction, and organizational commitment in voluntary turnover decisions. Compares a sample of managers from public service agencies who left their jobs to a sample of currently employed managers, discusses attitudes toward HRD, and recommends further research on the role of HRD in…