This paper considers the importance of providing technical training opportunities for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) worldwide through the case study of a MATLAB training programme, which was proposed, organised, managed and evaluated by a team of five ECRs at the University of Southampton. The effectiveness of the programme in terms of the…

Researchers have advocated building a knowledge base for teacher education based on practitioner knowledge. In this article, the authors, two teacher educators, present knowledge gained from their systematic study of two lessons to help prospective teachers learn to study teaching. They offer a detailed look at the lessons' successes and…

It has become accepted wisdom that there is a shortage of leaders in the library profession. A number of leader and leadership development programs have emerged in Australia, Canada and the United States that attract interested participants, yet what is the core purpose of these programs? Do they work? Review of leadership programs reveals that…

Although the idea of using a workshop to educate potential users about a set of materials or techniques is not new, the workshops described here go beyond simple dissemination and create ongoing communities of practice that support widespread and sustained improvement in the biochemistry classroom. The degree to which pedagogical innovations…

Transforming Writing is a two-year action research project which aims to develop a model for the teaching and learning of writing that more fully incorporates a focus on embedded formative assessment. In the first year of the project, the 12 participating schools developed a model of writing underpinned by Talk for Writing, an approach developed…

The need to makeover low-performing schools is urgent! Educational reports show that specific student populations are consistently low-performing academically. A postmodern model of school reform integrated with the realms of meaning will assist to close the educational gap in schools and society. According to postmodern guru, Fenwick English…

High stakes accountability (HSA) reforms were enacted in state after state and federally through the No Child Left Behind law, based on the belief that incentives that have consequences attached are effective ways to motivate educators to improve student performance. Our focus for this article is on school district level responses to HSA reforms…

This paper reports that the basic opportunity to learn does not exist in many countries, and that a concerted management focus to assure that schools provide basic elements of an opportunity to learn (OTL) could potentially yield big improvements in learning. The paper assesses: (1) what basic factors create the opportunity to learn; and (2) to…

Improving professional learning for educators is a crucial step in transforming schools and improving academic achievement. To meet federal requirements and public expectations for school and student performance, the nation needs to bolster teacher skills and knowledge to ensure that every teacher is able to teach increasingly diverse learners,…

This study examines patterns of literacy instruction in schools adopting three of America's most widely disseminated comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs (the Accelerated Schools Project, America's Choice, and Success for All). Contrary to the view that educational innovations seldom affect teaching practices, the study found large…

The study that we report in this paper, named as learning study, is a hybrid between a design experiment as characterized by Brown and Collins, and a Japanese lesson study as characterized by Yoshida, and Stigler and Hiebert. This paper aims at tracing the development of the learning study and examining its impact on teacher professional learning,…