This chapter examines the underlying motivations behind why institutions and organizations decide to apply particular policies and practices. By applying a lens of five diffusion models--learning, imitation, competition, normative, and coercion--to understand these motivations, decision makers and implementers will make better choices for…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a fundamental part of education. Incorporating high-quality SEL programming into day-to-day classroom and school practices has emerged as a main goal for many practitioners over the past decade. The present article overviews the current state of SEL research and practice, with a particular focus on the United…

The Common Core State Standards advocate more writing than previous standards; however, in taking a college and career readiness perspective, the Standards neglect to emphasize the role of context and culture in learning to write. We argue that sociocultural perspectives that pay attention to these factors offer insights into how to interpret and…

In this powerful new book, James Rickabaugh, former superintendent and current director of the Institute for Personalized Learning (IPL), presents the groundbreaking results of the Institute's half-decade of research, development, and practice: a simple but powerful model for personalizing students' learning experiences by building their levels of…

This issue is part of a series on the Teacher Practice Networks initiative and its efforts to broadly support teachers in implementing college- and career-readiness instruction. Effective teachers frequently reflect on how to improve their practice: "Did I scaffold the lesson well? Did I give students enough processing time? How can I help…

Evidence-based reform in education refers to policies that enable or encourage the use of programs and practices proven to be effective in rigorous research. This article discusses the increasing role of evidence in educational policy, rapid growth in availability of proven approaches, and development of reviews of research to summarize the…

RAND researchers present results from a spring 2019 survey of a nationally representative sample of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) public school teachers about their approaches to supporting students' social and emotional learning (SEL) and the factors that might influence those approaches. The authors explore teachers' SEL practices,…

There is increasing pressure on universities in the United States to meet the needs of diverse learners. This fact increases the urgency for implementation and scaling up of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in higher education. This qualitative study draws two major insights from interviews with six faculty members from universities and…

During the second half of the 20th century, a new pedagogical movement emerged, which centered around the concept of "critical thinking." While the movement soon became a significant player in the pedagogical field, its proponents continued to develop the theoretical and practical aspects of critical thinking, aiming to transform it into…

Over the past decade U.S. policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have sought to examine if changing teacher evaluation policies and systems have resulted in changes in identifying quality teachers and/or increased student achievement. This research generally shows most states have experienced little change in how teachers are rated.…

This study is designed to determine the level of E-learning Implementation in Jordan schools management. The study also investigated the Implementation of secondary School management towards the use of e-learning. A survey research design was used. A questionnaire was adopted and sent to secondary School management (N = 250) in Jordan schools in…

The relevance of studying the problem is conditioned by a number of circumstances existing in the Russian social education. Among the most important ones, the following should be named: having to bring the Russian education close to and harmonize it with the European one in line with the Bologna requirements, the need to overcome its excessive…

This article explores the process and outcomes of teaching critical reflection to social work students in an Australian university, based on our experience with teaching critical reflection. The application by students of a particular model of critical reflection to their learning experiences during field education placements is described and…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have been recognised as having the potential to raise the quality of teachers, teaching and student learning through structured teacher collaboration, and have been featured prominently in Singapore and Shanghai--both considered top-performing Asian societies in the Program for International Student…

With only four years of mandated state-standards in adult basic education (ABE), very little is known about the influence of state-standards implementation on the unique learning needs of its adult students. Two decades of research on standards-based education in the U.S. K12 system has yielded widely debated results regarding the impact of…