Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) are the legal documents guiding the education of students with disabilities served under IDEA. Despite the importance of these documents, noncompliance and lack of quality remain in the present levels of academic and functional performance, annual goals and objectives, and supplementary aids and services…

Preschool education is the first formal education process that supports the physical, affective, psychomotor, self-care and cognitive development of children. Children's participation in preschool education should be supported, as pre-school education provides children with the opportunity to learn during this critical period of the rapid…

Effective sexual health education plays a critical role in adolescent pregnancy and HIV and STI prevention. This article describes the formative research conducted to design, and then pilot-test, SkillFlix®, a streaming video training created to improve educators' skills in delivering sexual health education to youth by modeling Microskills®.…

This study aimed to investigate the two primary school science teachers' conceptions of professional development, their perceptions of self-improvement and the factors influencing their professional development. In this investigation, a case study approach was adopted. The participant teachers were given a semi-structured interview and the data…

This study focused on the perceptions of in-service general education teachers who completed a cohort mentoring program leading to certification in English as a Second Language (ESL) at a large, urban university. Based on interviews with 19 members of a cohort of 28, participants valued both the support and augmented skills-development the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of online professional development training on assistive technology by comparing knowledge acquisition through pretest/posttest scores and assessment of the participants' assistive technology implementation plans with a researcher designed rubric. The architecture for the six trainings…

A model for designing and implementing evidence-­based in­-service professional development in early childhood intervention as well as the key features of the model are described. The key features include professional development specialist (PDS) description and demonstration of an intervention practice, active and authentic job-­embedded…

This paper provides outcomes of a study examining the effectiveness of a year-long professional development training series designed to support in-service educators in learning a systematic approach to functional assessment-based interventions developed by Umbreit and colleagues (2007) that has met with demonstrated success when implemented with…

We posit that professional development (PD) models fall on a continuum from highly adaptive to highly specified, and that these constructs provide a productive way to characterize and distinguish among models. The study reported here examines the impact of an adaptive mathematics PD model on teachers' knowledge and instructional practices as well…

This paper presents a case study of the work of two teacher educators with an in-service science teacher. This case study forms one cycle of a larger action research study that will eventually lead to a model of how the third-space concept for teacher professional development can be realized in natural school settings. The case study took place in…

This article explores the learning arising from a pilot inter-school visits programme in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Teachers from two schools undertook a series of visits with the aim of developing learning and teaching in their schools. The pilot sought to understand ways in which such a collaborative visits programme could be used to build…

The increasing need to learn English worldwide leads to the rapid development in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Teachers in this profession are required to reach a much higher level of professionalism now, and their in-service professional development can be an effective approach to updating their professional learning…

Population data across the nation demonstrates the growing number of students in public schools who are from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, while public school data reflects a teacher population that is mainly white, middle class and female. While new teacher programs are beginning to respond to this diversity, in-service…

This article attempts to synthesize teachers' conceptions-of-teaching and integrate them into a structure for professional development. It presents one route by which a teacher might become more expert at the practice of teaching. Various conceptions-of-teaching theories are considered in the light of how they impact on the practice of teaching.…

Nearly two decades of research has taught some powerful lessons about how to design and implement meaningful and effective professional development for teachers. This newsletter examines the characteristics of high-quality professional development and offers some suggestions for improving its impact and effectiveness. For reform efforts centered…