Science teaching and learning is facing a new dilemma. It has to move from its old perception of science as a purely positivistic and value-free enterprise into regarding it as what it really is: a value-laden human endeavour characterised by historical, cultural, social and political parameters. Science teachers now have to deal with ethical, and…

The Australian Government Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency's (TEQSA's) guidance notes are concise documents designed to provide high-level, principles-based guidance on interpretation and application of specific standards of the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021. They also draw attention to other…

Many U.S. school districts now rely on instructional coaching to promote reform. Yet facets of coaching policy remain vague, and there is considerable variation in the structures and practices of coaching. We use longitudinal, qualitative data to analyze changes in instructional coaching, as a capacity building policy instrument, in one mid-sized…

There are many prescriptive learning design models, which attempt to guide teachers to design for learning by taking advantage of digital technologies. This paper argues that more emphasis could be put on design for learning as an informed practice. Four principles are suggested: Designs for learning should be (1) informed by available, relevant…

This article introduces a network approach to describe the quality of written scientific explanations. Existing approaches evaluate explanations mainly on the level of sentences or as a whole but not on the elementary level of single terms. Moreover, evaluation of explanations is often based on highly inferential scoring techniques. We addressed…

Background: The 'flipped classroom' approach is an innovative approach in educational delivery systems. In a typical flipped class model, work that is typically done as homework in the didactic model is interactively undertaken in the class with the guidance of the teacher, whereas listening to a lecture or watching course-related videos is…

The problem addressed in this research study was that strategies used by literacy coaches to train teachers to improve elementary level reading instruction are often not effective. The purpose of this qualitative narrative analysis study was to gain insight into the perspectives of teachers and literacy coaches in one school district in South…

Educators who are urged to use evidence-based practices to improve instruction often end up disappointed at the results, which fall short of those touted in the research and by the What Works Clearinghouse. Stanley Pogrow explains how common strategies researchers use to demonstrate evidence of success, such as statistical significance of or…

Both early-career teachers (ECTs) and alternatively prepared teachers (APTs) have been shown to have an exceptionally high attrition rate as they attempt to adjust to a new and strange profession, leaving early-career alternatively prepared teachers as an especially at-risk cross-section of the teaching force (Podolsky et al., 2019). Yet much of…

Previous scholarship finds that effective Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have increased student achievement and advanced teacher pedagogy. As a result, PLCs have become increasingly prevalent in school reform efforts to remediate professional development. Dialogue is considered an essential component of effective PLC practice needed to…

The past decade has witnessed a strong, standards-based call for improving what mathematics is taught and how it is taught. In the USA, districts have hired instructional coaches to help teachers shift their teaching from algorithm-based instruction to instruction that is more student-centered and conceptually focused. The purpose of this study…

In "Uprooting Instructional Inequity," noted leadership coach Jill Harrison Berg offers a comprehensive guide to help school and teacher leaders amplify the power of collaborative inquiry as a means for identifying, interrogating, and addressing instructional inequity. At the center of the book is Berg's i3PD Planning Map, an invaluable…

Writing is a critical 21st century skill. Today's knowledge economy places a premium upon collaboration and written communication, which means that the skilled writer enters the job market at a significant advantage (Aschliman, 2016; Brandt, 2005). And yet students typically enter the job market with weak writing skills. Only 27% of 12th-grade…

Market-based reforms, such as high-stakes teacher evaluation models aimed at improving teacher instructional practice, have not addressed student achievement concerns, especially among marginalized student demographic groups. Research contends that principal instructional feedback to teachers is a worthy strategy to improve teacher instructional…

The field of mathematics education has engaged in perennial debate about whether transmission-oriented or constructivist approaches to teaching will best help students learn. Yet, both fluency, learned through step-by-step procedural instruction, and the mathematical flexibility that comes from constructivist methods play an important role in…