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…

For most Americans, the high school years played a pivotal role in shaping what they know about subjects such as U.S. history, world history, literature, geometry and biology. For many, the high school years provide one of the last opportunities to gain valuable life-enhancing insights, for example, reading a classic novel such as "To Kill a…

The Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students 16 years of age or above must address specific transition components. Studies to date have focused on the presence and quality of these transition components, yet the alignment of these components and their role in leading the development of the IEP is just as critical. This qualitative…

This article describes the construction process and evaluation of the Agile Constructionist Mentoring Methodology (ACMM), a mentoring method for guiding software development projects in the high school. The need for such a methodology has arisen due to the complexity of mentoring software project development in the high school. We introduce the…

To determine teacher working knowledge of transition best practices, the Transition Programs and Services (T-PAS) survey was administered to 2,000 middle and high school teachers and 70 school district transition contacts. Three questions were asked: (a) What barriers exist that hinder the transition process? (b) What effective practices…

The Standards-based Education Project (STEP) was conducted as part of the Eisenhower Initial Teacher Professional Development Program in Oregon, under the Proficiency-based Admissions Standards System (PASS). STEP focused on the development of a framework of teacher knowledge, skills, and materials for pre-service and practicing teachers. High…

Pre-service programs for secondary teachers have traditionally involved method subjects, where participants are inducted into the curriculum practices of two disciplinary or subject areas. In 2003, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, enrolled a small group of fourteen pre-service teachers into an innovative Graduate Diploma of Secondary…

This paper reports on the learning outcomes described by experienced teachers attending a program designed to enable them to come together to engage in professional development through structured and systematic reflective practice. In the first part of the paper, we look briefly at some of the challenges of defining "reflective…