Teacher quality, along with the school context, classroom practice, and student mathematics achievement, are the key components in Clarke and Hollingsworth's (2002) model that depicts teachers' professional growth as an ongoing, dynamic, and interactive enterprise. Comfort and preparedness are dispositions that, along with teacher knowledge, are…

Many of the communities interested in learning and teaching technologies within higher education now accept the view that a conception of personal learning environments provides the most realistic and workable perspective of learners' interactions with and use of technology. This view may not be reflected in the behaviour of those parts of a…

This study provides a comprehensive look at a constructivist one-to-one computing program's effects on teaching and learning practices as well as student learning achievements. The study participants were 476 fourth and fifth grade students and their teachers from four elementary schools from a school district in the Dallas, Texas, area. Findings…

Research findings in recent years provide compelling evidence of the importance of encouraging student control over the learning process as a whole. The socially based tools and technologies of the Web 2.0 movement are capable of supporting informal conversation, reflexive dialogue and collaborative content generation, enabling access to a wide…

Over the last 10 to 15 years, a variety of efforts to transform American high schools have gained both public and private support. Significant among these are initiatives to implement Small Learning Communities (SLCs), part of a larger school reform and restructuring effort designed to address a variety of goals, including "downsizing large…

The author describes a modern one-room schoolhouse in Ocracoke, North Carolina--an open plan building in which six teachers instruct students aged 6 through 17. He extols the school's individualized learning environment, flexibility, and humanistic philosophy. (SJL)

Project ORDER is a pilot project tested in an urban middle school in Houston, Texas. The program was intended to improve the general school atmosphere; to improve students' attitudes toward the school, its program, faculty, and administration; to show significant improvement in pupil behavior; and to substantially improve teaching-learning…

Although it deals with both years of the program, this report is primarily concerned with the second year of Project ORDER. The program's objectives were to improve the general school atmosphere, including teacher, student, and parent attitudes toward the school; to show continued significant improvement in pupil behavior; and to substantially…

Projects are described that emphasize broad-based or comprehensive approaches to educational change, and are the result of a communitywide planning process designed to identify and then address core educational problems. Projects included in this publication are divided into "Changing Schools," which contains descriptions of projects…

This description of a general program for the preservice preparation of the teacher-innovator, developed as a source of ideas for thinking about and recreating teacher education, is organized into four parts. Part 1 contains introductory chapters which present definitions of terms, a brief description of the program, and general considerations of…

The document comprises three articles which analyze roles and tasks of teachers in innovative elementary schools in the United States, Netherlands, and England. Innovative schools are interpreted as schools which favor educational practices such as open classrooms, team teaching, parent involvement, nongraded classes, global orientation,…