Coordination among stakeholders has been considered as a significant influential factor in providing teachers with quality Professional Development (PD) opportunities. The importance of coordination intensifies when a variety of PD providers work on the capacity building of teachers in the same region such as in some rural areas of Pakistan. The…

This qualitative case study examines how board members make sense of federal accountability policies and how their sensemaking shapes their use of assessment data as a policy instrument. Deviating from previous work on practitioner sensemaking, the participants' interpretations of assessments did not align with their ensuing use of the data.…

Although rural special educators face many challenges in meeting the needs of students with disabilities, they often report having positive relationships with their students and families. Rural educators have the opportunity to leverage this relationship with families by having parents implement academic interventions with their child at home. The…

The effects of mixed-reality teaching experiences on participants' perceptions of their classroom management ability are evaluated using a mixed-methods design. Mursion, a technology that enables virtual simulations, is used. Participants include 29 undergraduates pursuing a degree in special education for learners with mild or moderate/severe…

The Essential Three (e3) is a professional learning series that focuses on supporting rural school districts and school leaders as they engage in the important work of prioritizing and determining areas of instructional focus. As educators transition to new rigorous state and national standards and face the challenges of learning newly adopted…

On Dec. 10, 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (P.L. 114-95) became law. ESSA primarily reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), but includes other provisions as well. Among these, Section 5005 requires the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) to "review the organization, structure, and process…

The purpose of this study was to inform the upcoming and overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) by exploring whether rural school districts face disadvantages as they attempt to follow the law's provisions and, if so, if the law's rural-specific section ameliorates these disadvantages. The research drew upon…

In-service courses have been used as a common strategy to build the capacity of teachers to meet the constantly changing demands of modern schooling. But how the teachers implement the ideas and strategies acquired from such in-service training and what conditions influence the implementation process is the least examined area in Pakistan,…

SAE programs were designed as an integral component in SBAE. However, participation has continued to decline. This qualitative study examined exemplary SAE programs in rural SBAE to discover factors that were working in SAE development and implementation. Through focus groups, individual and informal interviews, and observations, two themes that…

This paper is an examination of a teacher professional development program in northeast Louisiana, that provided 30 teachers and their students with the technology, skills, and content knowledge to collect data and explore weather trends. Data were collected from both continuous monitoring weather stations and simple school-based weather stations…

Due to imbalanced social and economic development, education in poverty-stricken rural areas in China is lagging behind that of urban areas. The current study explores the role of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) involved in rural compulsory education promotion. Results show that the NPOs are providing a variety of programs to promote rural…

Purpose: The article explores the significance of "evaluation" in the delivery of multifunctional extension advisory programmes and argues the necessity of integrating evaluation into programme planning, to ensure that programme guidelines are adhered to and extension advisory programmes generate their desired impact. The article focuses…

What and how much can children learn without subject teachers? In an attempt to find a limit to self organized learning, we explored the capacity of 10-14 year old Tamil-speaking children in a remote Indian village to learn basic molecular biology, initially on their own with a Hole-in-the-Wall public computer facility, and later with the help of…

Begun in June 1984, the national study utilized questionnaires from 461 rural education researchers and practitioners to provide the first empirical data for prioritization of rural education research needs. Since conducting and supporting rural education research are clearly federal functions, the study was prepared for dissemination to federal…

In 1975, The Texas Board of Education adopted instructional resources as a priority area and chose Learning Resources Centers (LRC) to be used as the means for implementation. Title IVC funds were granted for the 1976-1977, 1977-1978, and 1978-1979 school years to develop, plan, and field-test an LRC model which used a paraprofessional staff…