Nevada has recently taken considerable steps to reform English learner (EL) education across the state with teacher development as a primary focus. Educational reform agendas necessitate that teachers not only rethink their practices but teach in novel ways. It has been argued that teacher development through graduate education and other…

In collaboration with historic sites in Washington, DC, that have shared commitments to place-based and experiential learning, Ford's Theatre teaches K-12 educators about Civil War history through engagements with places, artifacts, stories, and enduring conflicts that can be made relevant to students' lives. In this article, we provide program…

NGSS Early Implementers is a six-year initiative created to help eight California school districts and two charter management organizations, supported by WestEd's K-12 Alliance, implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Administrators need learning opportunities if they are to adequately understand the substantial shifts of the Next…

Each summer, faculty and academic deans from institutions across the country make their way to the Wye River campus of the Aspen Institute on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a weeklong seminar. Described as professional development, it often turns out to be much more. The Wye Seminars have at their core a collection of classic texts--from Plato…

This study of four case studies looks at how secondary math, music, science, and social studies teachers' attitudes and classroom practices were affected by their participation in the Central Utah Writing Project (CUWP) summer institute. Participant interviews, observations, and artifacts were analyzed by looking at themes for effective…

Experiential learning theory places experience at the center of learning. Kolb's four-stage cycle of experiential learning suggests that effective learners must engage fully in each stage of the cycle--feeling, reflection, thinking, and action. This research assesses the alignment of Kolb's experiential learning cycle with the week-long Summer…

In 2010, the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, was awarded an Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant to develop, implement, and disseminate a research-based program of professional development (PD) that equips prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers to infuse…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are helping educators prepare for and implement the Common Core and aligned assessments through professional learning. The major professional development efforts around the Common Core were examined in order to understand the overall efforts of each state. An exhaustive list of…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are helping educators prepare for and implement their states' new college- and career-readiness standards and aligned assessments, through professional learning. SREB researchers examined each state's major professional development efforts around its new standards in order to…

The decade since publication of "Place as Text: Approaches to Active Learning" has seen an explosion of interest and productivity in the field of experiential education. This monograph presents a story of an experiment and a blueprint of sorts for anyone interested in enriching an existing program or willing to experiment with pedagogy…

Faculty members at a large state university engaged in discussions of 21st century communication, new media, and the demands for new communication skills as they elected to establish a Communication across the Curriculum (CxC) program in 2005. Faculty leaders reviewed communication theory (e.g., from McLuhan to Kress), best practices from other…

Teams of elementary teachers, school administrators, and school board members from seven representative school districts in Los Angeles County (California) participated in a 3-week summer institute (1983) with the aim of learning to plan and implement systematic discipline-based art programs that included aesthetic, critical, historical, and…

A cooperative project between community colleges in the Northeast and the Universities Field Staff International (UFSI) which sought to add an international dimension to existing community college curricula is described. Two objectives of the project are listed: to broaden faculty and administrative interest and skills in international studies;…

The purpose of this paper is to describe an institute on basic skills that was organized for faculty members at a historically black, public, four-year, urban-oriented, "open admissions" college. Specifically, the described institute was designed to develop positive faculty attitudes toward incorporating the teaching of basic skills into the…

Descriptions are offered of in-house leadership development programs for faculty and staff at Arizona State University, Kennesaw State College (Georgia), Seattle Community Colleges (Washington), the University of Kentucky, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Western Kentucky University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (MSE)