Civics courses have a great significance -- they are supposed to train new cohorts of citizens to engage in multiple public roles in (democratic) society. How it is done depends on a multitude of factors, and teachers' performance and program contents are among the most important. In post-authoritarian order like Poland, civic contents of…

This "impact story" details how the Region 7 Comprehensive Center supported the Mississippi Department of Education in improving its Professional Growth System and building statewide capacity to support its effective use.

Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice (HIP), but it can be difficult to implement well. Faculty generally lack training for effectively mentoring students. A semi-autonomous faculty organization at Utah Valley University has maintained a faculty development program, the Mentoring Undergraduate Research Academy (MURA), and other…

This chapter focuses on intentional educational development activities designed to prepare faculty for effective teaching and assessment of student learning. Some benefits of such activities include improved alignment of courses with programmatic outcomes, higher success rates in course reviews, and better demonstration of student learning on…

In this "Distance Learning" Special Issue, Errol Craig Sull introduces the "Try This" series of articles to assist with Becoming a Better Distance Learning Instructor. Sull notes, as each new year taps distance learning instructors on the shoulders they look to improve, to be the best they can be as distance educators. There…

For over two decades, NIET has been dedicated to building educator excellence to enhance student success by supporting states, districts, schools, and educator preparation programs in recruiting, developing, and retaining educators. The first section of the 2023-24 NIET Research Summary presents highlights from five recent studies that align with…

In this "Distance Learning" Special Issue, Errol Craig Sull introduces the "Try This" series of articles to assist with Becoming a Better Distance Learning Instructor. Sull notes, the basics of how to be a solid distance educator are well known: constant presence in the classroom, quick turnaround of student e-mails and…

Professional development in its current form falls short. It is unengaging, ineffective, and considered a waste of time by participants. At a time when the world is experiencing rapid change and schools are facing increasing scrutiny and mounting pressure to improve academic performance, we need professional development that works. Aleta Margolis…

This article describes how, in the face of staff shortages and teacher turnover, Worcester (Massachusetts) Public Schools is supporting multiple avenues to recruit and retain quality educators in the district. High-quality professional learning is one of those avenues for ensuring a strong and stable workforce. The district's Office of Curriculum…

In an effort to scale success, many schools codify various practices to replicate them across schools. While such codification and replication can help scale success, scaling success often comes with numerous negative externalities such as a reduction of autonomy and burdens on successful educators. Based on real events and educators, this case…

This chapter proposes the need to define the qualities of effective teaching in higher education and introduces a framework to assess teaching effectiveness (FATE) that can be adapted by other institutions for evaluating teaching, with the goal of promoting instructor development and growth.

For many years, directly addressing the mental and behavioral health needs of students was not a primary role I (Katie Dockweiler) played in the schools where I worked within the Clark County School District (CCSD), Nevada. Over my 14-year tenure, I have served as a bilingual school psychologist consulting with nearly 100 schools on second…

Effective communication is at the heart of good teaching, and one of the central tenets of effective communication is to know your audience. What often gets less attention is the need for good teachers to know "themselves" and consider how they are the same, or different from, their students. To build supportive relationships with…

This conceptual paper discusses 'unseen observation' as an alternative model of classroom observation to support teachers' professional learning. The paper starts with a critical synopsis of how observation has been appropriated principally as a performance management tool for monitoring teacher effectiveness in the UK. It argues that the…

In response to national concerns a decade ago, driven by research that showed that higher education was making little impact on students' development of broad competencies and critical thinking, the provost and president of Purdue University, a research university, instituted a program whose goals were to build on the accumulated knowledge on…