Workforce development is one of the top issues for state higher education executives today. Employers are actively looking for ways to address skill gaps and labor shortages in their companies. To address these talent gaps, states are aligning their academic program approval process with state workforce needs. Minimal research has explored the…

This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of teachers towards their professional development (PD) in a school with a high population of low-income students. The study focus was driven by critical theory with a unique application of attribution theory as a part of the data analysis. This moved the data analysis beyond simply a…

Our department is in the early stages of a multi-year effort to nurture a culture that values active learning. We focus on the change process, including specific, pragmatic ideas from the literature on grassroots leadership and systemic change. We briefly review Wenger's work on cultivating communities of practice and use Wenger's evaluation of…

Teachers play a critical role in the success of their students, both academically and in regard to long term outcomes such as higher education participation and economic attainment. Expectations for teachers are increasing due to changing learning standards and a rapidly diversifying student population. At the same time, there are perceptions that…

Researchers explored how a joint research initiative, focusing on the tenets of teacher mentorship, impacted Associate Teachers (ATs) and Faculty Advisors (FAs) in developing relationships and fulfilling their roles to effectively mentor pre-service teacher candidates. Participants in the study included elementary and secondary ATs and university…

The educational landscape around standards, assessment, professional development, and funding is changing at a rapid pace. This article asks how can education institutions--and educators--respond with a balance of urgency and coherence? How can education institutions temper the need for risk-taking and innovation with the responsibility to deliver…

Publically engaged scholarship demands new ways of working within and outside of the academy. Systems within the university reward faculty for individual achievements. This approach militates against working on collaborative projects because of the difficulty of explaining and quantifying one's contribution. The culture of academia further…

Keeping in mind the rising rate of K-12 enrollment, and the increased demand for online teachers, the need for professional development of online teachers is keenly felt. The skills needed for teaching in face-to-face environments are not always transferable to online settings. There is a pointed change in the way teaching takes place in an online…

For decades, teacher educators and others have looked critically at the way teachers are initially prepared and during the last ten years the calls for reform in teacher education have become even more frequent. Some programs have responded to those demands and made substantial and long lasting changes. This qualitative study reports on data…

This paper examines the challenges that "grass roots" e-learning initiatives face in trying to become sustainable. A cross-institutional study focused on local, rather than centrally driven, initiatives. A number of successful e-learning innovations were identified that had been driven by capable teachers seeking solutions to real…

In most western countries, the problems of effective university-controlled and largely university-based initial teacher education (ITE) have been apparent for many decades: whatever is achieved in the university, the teaching practices and attitudes that student-teachers usually learn to adopt are those currently dominant in the schools. So it is…

This series of papers was originally presented as a symposium at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) held between April 9, 2007, and April 13, 2007, in Chicago, IL. The authors represent school districts and departments of education across the…

The University of Sydney is a large, research-intensive, campus-based Australian University. Since 2004 a strategic initiative of project-based eLearning support has been creating teams of non-academic and academic staff, who have worked together to develop online resources to meet identified needs. The University's aims in continuing to provide…

Author discussed further education as a focus for experiment and innovation and stressed that true implementation of new ideas cannot be taken for granted. (Author/RK)

The process of change in education, if reform is to reflect the educator's true intent, relies on the adequate development and systematic implementation of ideas. Examines what is, or should be, the context for such change. (Author/RK)