The United States economic recession is now in its third year and continues to have a serious impact on the American higher education system, including Illinois' public community colleges. Illinois community colleges are seeing increases in enrollments while at the same time seeing significant decreases in state funding. The purpose of this…

The transition from 8th grade to 9th grade is one that is replete with challenges for students, especially for minority students who live in economically disadvantaged communities. One low-income, high minority comprehensive high school in the western United States implemented five separate strategies to create a freshman transition program to aid…

Reading teachers are faced with the challenge of providing instruction to a population of diverse students with various abilities and styles of learning within local and state school districts. In an effort to improve student performance on high-stake examinations in reading, teachers continue to seek the most effective instructional strategies.…

This article examines how laptop computing technology, teacher professional development, and systematic support resulted in changed teaching practices and increased student achievement in 47 K-12 schools in 11 Florida school districts. The overview of a large-scale study documents the type and magnitude of change in student-centered teaching,…

Background: This article builds on three years of qualitative research on Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program, a class size reduction policy in Wisconsin. Objective: In this article, we take a practice-oriented perspective on assessment, examining how assessments in schools that participated in a class size…

This study explored the use of the Web-based virtual environment, Adobe Connect Pro, in a postgraduate online teacher education programme at the University of Waikato. It applied the tenets of Moore's Theory of Transactional Distance (Moore, 1997) in examining the efficacy of using the virtual classroom to promote quality dialogue and explored how…

International students often require extracurricular assistance upon arrival in the host country. Many universities operate programs pairing international and domestic students for academic and adjustment assistance. The tutor system operating at Japanese national universities has similar objectives. Although the literature has highlighted several…

The Ohio Department of Education created Early Learning Content Standards in 2004 for children aged three to five grounded in research in the content areas of math, science, social studies and English/Language Arts. This mixed method study was designed to examine the perceptions of preschool teachers as they aligned the early learning content…

The purpose of this study was to develop a tool to evaluate the quality of a clinical information system (CIS) conceived by nurses and conduct a pilot test with the developed tool as an initial assessment. CIS quality is required for successful implementation in information technology (IT) environments. The study started with the realization that…

Today's educational reform literature abounds with convincing testimonials of schools operating as professional learning communities. The model is highly sought but often misunderstood and shallowly applied. Although much evidence exists regarding the characteristics of effective learning communities, the literature review reveals a gap in the…

WebQuests are increasing in popularity across the country, yet it remains unclear whether WebQuests confer a significant benefit in student content learning. In addition, the perceptions of teachers regarding the classroom value and efficacy of WebQuests in teaching higher level thinking skills are still unclear. The goals of the study were (a) to…

Current literature on the effectiveness of structured mentoring or induction programs for new counselors is lacking. Concurrently, new school counselors often experience difficulty in assuming the professional responsibilities associated with their role during the initial year of practice. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions…

This technical report provides a summary of feedback from teachers, administrators, and support personnel who used the easyCBM progress monitoring and benchmark assessment system during school year 2009/2010. Data were gathered from semi-structured focus groups conducted during the 2010 easyCBM August Institute at the University of Oregon. Results…

As service-learning is adopted by growing numbers of higher education institutions, there is increasing interest in understanding the factors necessary to sustain service-learning for the long-term. Institutions that were early adopters of service-learning may offer important insights into what factors influence long-term sustainability. With this…

The purpose of this manuscript is twofold: First, the authors explore the nature of the learning in which their students engaged during a service-learning experience in efforts to understand the meanings of teaching and learning they constructed, and how the context of this experience interacted with their candidates' previously constructed…