While overall graduation rates are improving, persistent disparities in graduation rates among groups of students remain, and must be addressed. High school reform is a viable approach to addressing these disparities. Early College High Schools, Small Schools of Choice, and Career Academies are all secondary school reform models that have been…

This study proposes an empirically grounded theory of how school reform implementation relates to effectiveness, useful for developing and studying many approaches to school reform both in the U.S. and abroad, and also for assessing how policymakers and implementers might leverage various aspects of implementation to create effective school…

Social entrepreneurs don't lack ambition. Being a social entrepreneur requires an irrational belief in the power of one's work to transform a world in dire need of change. Just look at the scale and degree of change embodied in any social impact organization's vision and mission statements about the transformation it aspires to create for the…

Organizations including universities are operating in an increasingly volatile environment and they are in a state of constant change. To survive and thrive in this ever-changing environment, building the capacity to adapt is essential. The basic purpose of this research was to identify and propose basic dimensions that help to envisage the…

Sustained innovation in teaching and learning is needed to achieve high-quality outcomes in student learning. However, despite extensive research in teaching and learning practice, challenges are faced to translate teaching research into scholarly practice, especially in professional degrees. This article develops and proposes a new conceptual…

Nations transfer educational reform models for the systematic improvement of education. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which have implemented primarily Western decentralized reform models to overhaul their educational systems. This article reports non-empirical research, written as a conceptual analysis…

Higher education institutions must prepare students for success in the dynamic knowledge economy by providing a high-quality educational experience. As the world and our understanding of learning processes continually evolve, educators face the challenge of developing innovative strategies to engage and motivate students in their own learning.…

Every university has many ways to make changes, and institutional transformation is one of the strategic choices to achieve excellence. However, the transformation of higher education is still dynamically defined and open. The practice also has many models and differences. This article examines the scientific paradigm shift to rethink the practice…

Coaches are trusted advisors, information conduits, sounding boards, and advocates who facilitate institutional change. This report summarizes findings from the first five years of the Student Success Center Network's Coaching Program, focusing particularly on the most recent phase that engaged directly with Centers in four states (California,…

In answer to calls for research about professional change, this study addressed the question: What is involved in college science faculty readiness for change in instructional practice? The setting was a professional development experience in oceanography/marine science and paleoclimatology among 32 faculty from 2- and 4-year colleges. Ten of the…

In this article, we describe the self-directed change made by a rural elementary school in response to a data-based examination of its service-delivery model that revealed its lowest performing students were spending most of their time with the school's least qualified staff. This mixed-method case study describes (a) why and how the school…

On the surface, this trickle-down view of educational change--what T. Nichols calls "innovation-from-above"--makes sense. Teachers learn about new devices, apps, teaching techniques, and leadership strategies as they show up in articles, reports, and other professional resources, or after they have already been implemented elsewhere.…

Background: Efforts to achieve improved student outcomes in STEM are critically reliant on the success of reform efforts associated with teaching and learning. Reform efforts include the transformation of course-based practices, community values, and the institutional policies and structures associated with teaching and learning in higher…

While university change initiatives have become more common in the face of changing learner needs and higher education funding, many fail to produce desired effects, even when guided by organizational change models. The purpose of this study was to document a successful change process in an engineering department at a Hispanic-serving institution…

Despite trending investment in active learning infrastructure to support student learning, inclusion, and career preparedness, few universities have achieved the orchestration of campus stakeholders and pedagogical reform "at scale." This article presents a process-oriented model for developing faculty and students for success in these…