The authors investigated the design and implementation of the capstone courses that are part of Virginia's College and Career Readiness Initiative. Based on a set of performance expectations for college readiness, two capstone courses--one in English and one in mathematics--were developed to help support high school juniors and seniors who intend…

Student response systems (SRS) or clickers have become the norm in K-12 classrooms as an assessment tool as well as a means to increase class participation. Like most technologies, there are varying platforms and manufacturers of SRS mobile devices ranging in cost from approximately $1500 to $3000. In spring 2010, Microsoft launched a free…

Purpose: This paper aims to focus on the changing nature of quality assurance systems within the sixth form college sector. Design/methodology/approach: Ten sixth form colleges were surveyed across England and staff from varying levels within college hierarchies questioned about how quality assurance systems were implemented. Research involved…

We report on a study of three school jurisdictions in the province of Alberta. The original premise for the research on which this report is based was to investigate the diverse ways that school districts had administered resources that were provided through a major initiative to improve learning in the province. This account is not centrally…

Teachers' professional development is a key to any educational change and is critical when leading and assimilating change, such as introducing standards into classrooms. A national professional development (PD) framework was developed for the implementation of science standards published by the Israeli Ministry of Education, which was activated…

This paper describes an exploration into a reform of the A-level qualification in England in 2008; namely, the introduction of the "stretch and challenge" policy. This policy was initiated by the exams regulator and determined that exam papers should be redesigned to encourage the application of higher order thinking skills, both in the…

The Anglo-Saxon countries have implemented Management by Objectives (MBO) complemented with school-based management (SBM) fairly rapidly. Although these countries are considered something of a benchmark of stability, research on principals reveals that they experience high levels of stress and that this is associated with poorer job performance.…

The present study provides an implementation fidelity, process, and immediate outcomes evaluation of Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND), a drug prevention program targeting continuation high school youth (n = 1426) at risk for drug abuse. A total of 24 schools participated in three randomized conditions: TND Only, TND and motivational…

We examined the role of an in-company training program aimed at enhancing employees' intrinsic work-goal motivation by increasing their career preparedness in a randomized field experimental study. The program activities were implemented using an organization-level two-trainer model with trainers from the human resources management and…

Building relationships between traditional college students and adults with disabilities is an important yet little understood aspect of civic engagement. The case study presented in this paper built one such relationship by utilizing a shared narrative project to construct an equitable collaborative experience between a set of students from…

Several wealthy colleges and universities have recently begun removing all loans from low-income students' financial aid packages. This article reports on a study that found that the introduction of "no-loan" policies has positively impacted low-income enrollments, suggesting that this aid strategy may be an effective, though limited,…

This study provides insight into equity issues in post-secondary education by exploring and assessing the history, the reality and the potential developments in higher education for minority students in China, in comparison to post-secondary education for aboriginal students in Canada. It highlights access to post-secondary education by these…

Background and Purpose: Given the urgency to design programs to increase physical activity, especially to combat obesity in children, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions and opinions of a nature-based physical activity intervention designed for low-income urban adolescents. Methods: Four focus groups of adolescents,…

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction…

This report describes a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) intervention study of the effectiveness of the ABRACADABRA (ABRA) Web-based literacy system using a classroom-level RCT intervention with 1,067 children in 74 kindergarten and Grade 1 or Grade 1/2 classrooms across Canada. The authors closely followed the CONSORT criteria for executing…