Amidst calls to personalize learning and blend K-12 classrooms, all too often we stop short of specifics. When the Highlander Institute and the Clayton Christensen Institute came together last year to plan the 2016 Blended and Personalized Learning Conference, their goal was to organize an event that put practitioners at the center of the…

The present study starts describing the relevance of university mission statements and how they have been interacting with the social demands throughout the history of higher education. This way, the recent development of a knowledge economy has strongly impacted universities that look for ways to produce and commercialize ideas (second and third…

For the past two and one-half years I have been a practitioner participant in the National Center on Scaling Up Effective School's (NCSU's) work with Fort Worth Independent School District. I have a unique vantage point, being one of the few members remaining who has been involved since the very beginning. In addition, my work with NCSU has…

This paper reports findings from a multi-year study of the scale-up of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), an approach to improve academic literacy by helping teachers provide the support students need to be successful readers in the content areas. WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), began developing the program in 1995 and has since reached…

This paper considers professional development in a context that is familiar and problematic to teaching teams in tertiary education everywhere, that of delivering online programmes with an ever-decreasing complement of staff. The Teaching Qualification Further Education (TQFE) teaching team at University of Dundee confronted the reality of reduced…

Having implemented and evaluated over 35 mlearning projects in a variety of contexts in higher education over the past 6 years the researcher is ready to share the untold secret: not all mlearning projects succeed! This article critiques three of the researcher's mlearning projects that can be classed as "failures" and compares them to successful…

This paper describes Innovation Configuration (IC) Mapping as an approach for assessing the extent of implementation of a program. An IC Map is similar metaphorically to a road map in that it summarizes different ways of getting from one point to another. Each map consists of basic units, or components, that can be made operational in a number of…

The need for specific information about principals as change facilitators prompted a long-range research program. A first step in this effort investigates the interventions principals make in relation to the implementation of an innovation in their schools. Subjects were 10 principals of elementary schools where an identifiable innovation…

Researchers have only recently recognized that assertions by various educators that they have implemented educational innovations do not all mean the same thing or bear the same weight, according to the authors of this report. Efforts made by the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education at the University of Texas at Austin to…

Effectiveness of school health education programs is judged by the extent the programs are disseminated and maintained in the classroom. This paper reviews concepts, strategies, and methods used to study dissemination and implementation, specifies functions of this research, and describes procedures that evaluate effectiveness of dissemination and…

The dissemination of successful educational innovations has long been a strongly supported policy in educational settings. Recent research developments have led to a debate as to the appropriateness of a centralized versus decentralized dissemination policy. The current research provided a test of the modified Research, Development and Diffusion…

The research discussed in this paper was intended to identify factors that promote or retard change in schools and to relate those factors to the modifications they foster. Data were collected from 13 Wisconsin elementary schools to determine what factors affect (1) the decision to adopt an innovation, (2) the rate of implementation of an…

Concerned with how new schooling structures, once implemented, will remain in place, this paper reviews findings of the International School Improvement Project (ISIP) about institutionalization and suggests their application to educational restructuring results. According to the ISIP study, indicators of complete institutionalization include…

Belgium's Renewed Primary School (RPS) project began in 1973 as part of a national commitment to innovative reform. The project's many goals focused on increasing interdependence among educational resources to support a more individualized, humanized, and effective response to pupil needs. Schools participating in the RPS effort usually selected…

To reduce the multiplicity of secondary schools, broaden students' educations, allow later career choices, and increase educational equality, the Netherlands in 1975 established several experimental comprehensive secondary schools. Opposition at the time led to the separation of the schools from the regular school system. Development of the…