Among the many elements that make up an effective educator, the most important is self-efficacy, writes ASCD author Chase Mielke. When schools support educators in developing a sense of efficacy, there's often a chain reaction.

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.…

For two decades, researchers at the University of Kansas have conducted studies to better define, validate, and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of instructional coaches. The result of all this work is the impact cycle (Knight, 2018), a model coaches can use with teachers to help them masterfully create positive classrooms. The impact…

Many school leaders are committed to providing coaching to teachers, but coaching doesn't come together in their school because they haven't taken time to communicate a clear definition of coaching to the school and, especially, set up a clear structure for a coaching program. Aguilar, an education consultant and respected author on coaching,…

In recent years, educators have used the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model to describe the ideal trajectory of teachers as learners with new technology. The very same general pattern can be found in Judith Sandholtz's research from the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow project in the 1980s and the five-phase model…

In this article, the author reflects on the support that novice teachers may need when preparing lesson plans. Showing that support makes a difference, three groups of teachers (one with access to lessons plans along with assistance from an online learning community; one with model plans but just online access; and one writing their own lesson…

Field Elementary School in Littleton, Colorado, had previously seen success with its pullout model of instruction for English language learners. However, as the English language learner (ELL) population increased to 42 percent, the school's performance on state assessments dropped, and it was clear that something different was needed. School…

The concept of personalization in learning appeals to many K-12 teachers and students weary of regimented, one-size-fits-all instruction. The in-vogue term personalization is used to refer to many different learning strategies and structures--from personal learning plans to greater student voice. Differentiation expert Carol Ann Tomlinson is…

The traditional method of teaching math--showing students how to do a procedure, then assigning problems that require them to use that exact procedure--leads to adults who don't know how to approach problems that don't look like those in their math book. Seeley describes an alternative teaching method (upside-down teaching) in which teachers give…

The best way to teach students to write well-crafted essays, Gallagher claims, is to consider how people learn to do anything unfamiliar. They carefully examine someone who knows how to do that thing and then emulate that person's actions. Just so, if teachers want students to write persuasive arguments, interesting explanatory pieces, and…

"Writing is a core skill for living, not just for school," writes high school English teacher Penny Kittle. Although it's important to teach students the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, teachers don't need to approach this task "like scolds, red pens in hand, stamping out sin, and punishing…

It must have seemed simple to the framers of No Child Left Behind. For years, they had poured more and more money into federal programs for schools, yet reading performance had not improved. It appeared that the money had gone down a rat hole, and Congress was ready to hold schools accountable. It was time to get tough. Unfortunately, the…

Teacher collaboration and engagement in policy offer hope for improving teacher recruitment, retention, and morale-and for reenergizing the profession. Unfortunately, teacher engagement in education policy is woefully lacking. Research has shown that 70 percent of teachers feel out of the loop in district decision making. "Everyone at the…

Value-added models are a specific type of "growth model," a diverse group of statistical techniques to isolate a teacher's impact on his or her students' testing progress while controlling for other measurable factors, such as student and school characteristics, that are outside that teacher's control. Opponents, including many teachers, argue…

Dueck recounts how, as a high school history teacher, he began to allow students to retake all or part of their end-of-unit tests. Influenced by the work of Rick Stiggins, Dueck prepared students for tests better by focusing on three questions Stiggins says students should be able to answer for themselves: Where am I going in this unit?, Where am…