Over the last 40 years, the Conceptual Physical Education (CPE) movement has played an important role in the evolution of secondary school physical education (PE). In this article, we trace the history of CPE as well as fitness education (FE) programs that share common objectives with CPE. CPE at the college/university level is almost universal…

An instructional model can unite school leaders, teachers, and students with shared goals, a shared understanding of how to reach the goals, and a shared vocabulary for discussing progress. In this paper, the authors present an introduction to instructional models and a leadership primer focused on helping school teams cohere around an initiative…

States began adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010 after they were launched by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. Five years later, policymakers in numerous states continue to debate the Common Core and related elements, such as how to assess the standards. This brief provides a…

Schools implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) are often confronted with concerns from a variety of educational stakeholders about school climate, teaching behavioral expectations, the role of reinforcement, and labeling students. Administrators should be prepared to respond to these concerns with theoretical and…

States are in various stages of reforming how they evaluate their educators, all striving for a new system that can assess a range of abilities and practices over long periods of time and capture the full nature of an educator's performance. The strongest systems look at teaching in a more comprehensive way than evaluations have done in the past,…

This study attempts to identify and describe Minnesota superintendents' perceptions of barriers to district-level reform as well as compare superintendents' perceptions of district reform related characteristics. This research also strives to identify factors preventing Minnesota's district-level leadership from implementing national reform…

Integrating digital age technology into an industrial age educational system is hard enough. Imagine introducing ed tech to a 450-year-old Jesuit educational paradigm. Find out how to seamlessly combine the NETS with a centuries-old framework to create an effective ed tech strategic plan. This article describes how the author successfully…

This article outlines policies from multilateral organisations that advocate sharing best practices between developing nations. The article discusses the degree to which these best practices are implemented by small states as indicated by teachers, academics and policymakers in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. For the purpose of this article, a…

This article, based on six years of participant observation, provides a close-up view of two learning communities in an urban elementary school. It provides a case study of both learning communities, laying out how teachers participating in them learned to respond differently to difficult problems and dilemmas, to change their language and…

The Common Core of Standards project has strong national support, but it will not succeed if it doesn't involve teachers in grassroots development activities. The initiative should involve local consortia of schools in working with the new standards, assessments, and support tools. Local teachers would design teaching units and then share these…

Many public schools currently have organizational structures that form barriers for dealing more effectively with students' challenging behaviors even though positive school-wide approaches exist and provide empirical support for their use. Nevertheless, resistance to change occurs at both institutional and individual levels. Improving student…

Over the months of a graduate course in literacy education, the authors engaged in many conversations about their leadership roles in the district in which they both work. Their schools are actively engaged in school improvement with a focus on enhancing student achievement. The district and the provincial Department of Education have given…

Two elementary schools in White Plains, New York, have been involved in the Child Development Project (CDP) since 1991. This paper describes how the staffs and administrators built caring communities into their schools. The paper is written from the perspective of a staff developer who became a district coordinator for staff development. The paper…

Discussion of the role of implementation mediators in implementing computer technology in schools focuses on the role of WCET Television in helping schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, to adopt computer technology. Guidelines for successful implementation are suggested which emphasize the need to understand and address resistance to change. (21…

Discusses how college presidents who were asked by the Knight commission to suggest changes in athletics programs founds themselves caught between forces focused on winning and on academics. (EV)