The goal of this comparative study was to examine the investment in faculty who were trained in culturally relevant pedagogy through the Unity Community Education Foundation Summer Learning Institute and the Garden Community College's homegrown Unity Mini-Summer Learning Institute. The study explored instructor development and institutional…

We compared the effectiveness of and preference for different feedback strategies when training six special education teachers during a 5-day summer training program. In Experiment 1, teachers received written or vocal feedback while learning to implement two different types of preference assessments. In Experiment 2, we compared either written or…

The 21st century faculty member is expected to teach, engage the learner, absorb new discoveries and rely on different knowledge in the execution of duties. This calls for up-to-date skills for instruction, assessment, and identification of opportunities by faculty members to promote learning. This paper investigates the prospects of promoting…

To be an effective urban educator requires teachers to understand the contextual factors of students, the school, and the community, and their cumulative effects on learning. Urban teacher academies support a better understanding of urban classrooms and challenge stereotypes of the urban context. The focus of this study was to compare…

The early childhood literature has documented the impact of early literacy experience on children's later language and literacy development. The research also showed the achievement gap between children from lower socio-economic status and their peers from more economically advantaged backgrounds. To address this gap, the existing literature has…

This study examines the outcomes of a US-based six-week summer professional development program for 19 Taiwanese teachers of Mandarin Chinese as a Foreign Language. The goal of this funded program was to facilitate international teachers' understanding and application of the "World-Readiness Standards" for Learning Languages (National…

This study employed technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and new literacies frameworks to explore in-service teachers' developing understanding of integrating technology into literacy instruction while concurrently enrolled in a graduate level course and teaching students in a digital writing camp. The inclusion of a…

Although results showing coaching effectiveness are accumulating, coaching is often included with other forms of Professional Development (PD) support including teacher in-service (Powell, Diamond, Burchinal, & Koehler, 2010; Kretlow et al., 2011), access to an annotated video library (Allen et al., 2011), and access to ongoing learning…

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the Pathways to STEM Initiative (PSI) on students and science teachers and to describe the level of PSI implementation. One group of middle schools participated in PSI, which included project-based science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursework; extra-curricular STEM opportunities…

This applied dissertation was designed to determine the impact of a technology integration professional development on high school teachers' technology integration and students' use of computers in core content areas. The District invested in technology for all classrooms, as well as 1:1 technology for all secondary students with an expectation…

We offered four annual professional development workshops called STAR (for Scientific Teaching, Assessment, and Resources) modeled after the National Academies Summer Institute (SI) on Undergraduate Education in Biology. In contrast to the SI focus on training faculty from research universities, STAR's target was faculty from community colleges,…

Research experiences for teachers (RET) programs report benefits to teachers and students. RET programs aim to give teachers authentic science research experiences based on the premise that these experiences will improve science instruction. Specifically, many programs require teacher development of lessons and units to help translate the…

Adopting new curricula presents both a need and an opportunity for professional development to advance teacher content knowledge and instructional practices for achieving curriculum-specific student outcomes. This study examines two modalities of professional development: face-to-face in a summer workshop and online that included two days of…

This article describes findings and evolution of a teacher-training program based on a partnership of knowledge domains (technology, content, and pedagogy), teaching staff (college faculty and school teachers), educational institutions (colleges and K-12), and local communities (urban and suburban). Within 5 years, more than 180 teachers from 15…

In this article, we describe and report on the results of a study in Texas that tested 2 models of professional development for classroom teachers as a way of improving their practices and increasing the reading achievement of their students. To meet this goal, 44 participating teachers in grades 2-8 learned to teach their students cognitive…