In 2004-05, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) began a groundbreaking partnership with the Eli Broad Foundation to develop the Academy for Leadership in Philadelphia Schools (ALPS), one of several Broad-funded, alternative principal development programs initiated across the country. The ALPS effort was designed to respond to two challenges:…

Whilst educational action research is not unknown in Croatia, its use is not widespread. In part, this might be because action research assumes a high level of autonomy for practitioner-researchers, and a constructivist view of knowledge, neither of which are traditional characteristics of the Croatian system. This article reports on a capacity…

"Growing a nurturing classroom" is an awareness training programme presented by educational psychologists in Leicestershire for professionals working in primary schools with the aim of promoting an optimal environment for learning and emotional well-being. The training helps primary school staff to take a holistic approach to education;…

This article presents the main domains that reinforced 11 novice teacher educators, as evidenced by their feedback regarding a one-year programme implemented at an intercollegiate professional centre. The main argument posits that since the teacher educator plays a key role in the foundation of the teacher education profession, he/she must be an…

Background: Elementary classroom teachers must overcome a number of instructional barriers, including time constraints and professional preparation, if they are to deliver effective health education and enhance health literacy among youth. Purpose: This study examined the direct impact of a long-term professional development program on integrating…

Considering the high levels of time and money invested in teacher professional development programmes in information technologies over recent decades, questions arise as to how effective these programmes have been and by whose lights we are to judge. Based on a critical review of the evaluations of several of our own action-research-based…

Establishing literacy in science is often linked to building knowledge about the Nature of Science (NOS). This paper describes and evaluates an inservice program designed to build elementary teachers' understanding of NOS and an awareness of how NOS impacts science classroom instruction. Data sources consisted of surveys, action research plan…

This paper examines in-service school leaders' perceptions regarding the degree to which their administrator preparation program addressed necessary skills and knowledge to effectively work with educators of children in special education and gifted programs. Principals from a large metropolitan district were surveyed. Findings indicate some…

This article reports on an online collaborative project between English language teachers pursuing a degree in TESL/TESOL from three universities in Malaysia--Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). A total of 142 teachers were involved in the study and about three to eight…

With the creation of IUFMs (university institutes of teacher training) in the 1990s, the training of teacher trainers in France has become a fundamental part of the renewal of teacher training. It is seen as a fundamental lever for the IUFMs to achieve the tasks and goals entrusted to them: training teachers who need to accommodate the new demands…

As coordinator of the ABE Teaching and Learning Advancement System (ATLAS) based in the Hamline University School of Education in St. Paul, the author does many workshops or conference sessions in Minnesota's nine professional development regions each year. Typical single-day events offer multiple 90-minute workshops. She often questions the…

This article describes an example of how action learning was used as a framework for an organisational intervention to fundamentally change the organisational culture over a period of time. It also identifies our learning over that period of time and what worked well (and not so well) in an International Non-Governmental Organisation in Nepal.

Reynolds and Wheldall reviewed research relating to Reading Recovery (RR) and concluded that "RR has provided an excellent model in demonstrating how to plan, promote, and implement an intervention across an educational system and how to design a professional development programme" (2007, p. 218). They balanced this praise with concerns about the…

Scholars from the American Institutes for Research analyzed findings from over 1,300 studies that potentially address the effect of professional development on student learning outcomes. The project was sponsored by the Regional Education Laboratory-Southwest (RELSW) and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of…

This study investigated the effects of a teacher professional development program funded by a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) grant on program participants' (teachers') stages of concern toward instructional technology integration into curriculum. The study also explored potential differences in the concern levels among the participants from different…