Small institutions must be agile and creative in successfully sustaining and expanding in today's higher education climate. Collaborating with external partners is an excellent choice for small institutions whose funding and staffing are limited. Our intention with this article is to focus on collaboration with external partners including…

Around the world, the number of learning assistants (LAs) employed in schools has increased dramatically over the last two decades. Underpinned by the global move towards more inclusive education, and consequently an increasingly diverse school population, they now play a key role in supporting learners with additional needs. A number of concerns…

The Georgia Tech Library Public Services Department proposed to expand the number of staffed service points throughout the Library to increase coverage and service. The proposal was well-received by Library leadership and earned priority placement in the Library's annual budget request. The theoretical underpinning for this reception is an…

This study provides a detailed picture of how the on-going challenge of teacher shortages in England and Wales is driving the deployment of teaching assistants (TAs) to cover classes in place of teachers. Analyses of data from a survey of nearly 6000 TAs in mainstream and special schools found that TAs cover classes for up to 4 h a week, with one…

Guided by normalization process theory, our qualitative case study explored classified staff members' perceptions of their role in the implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports in schools within a large urban US school district. Analysis reveals that classified staff members' gleaned knowledge of positive…

This paper explores the experiences of educators in Australia with doctoral qualifications and how they perceive their knowledge and research skills to be valued and leveraged as legitimate funds of knowledge in school environments. Findings from an online survey and four semi-structured interviews provoke further consideration of how teachers'…

Teacher workload is a growing problem internationally. In this article, we analyse an attempt by the state education bureaucracy of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to address this through the 'Quality Time Program'. Drawing on labour process theory and Carol Bacchi's framework of 'What's the problem represented to be?', we analyse how the…

School-based mental health professionals, including school psychologists, counselors, and social workers are critical to appropriate mental health services to youth in schools. However, the vast majority of states are chronically underserved by these professionals, despite policies that attempt to rectify the shortages. In this paper, we document…

Our recently completed research project investigated strategies being used by Wisconsin rural school districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives such as Educators Rising that involve partnerships with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify,…

Small institutions are in a unique and perhaps necessary position to innovate as the field changes, resources falter, and the needs of the next generation of students and families become apparent and quite different from those supported by our historical structures and service modalities. This article examines the literature surrounding historical…

For decades, declines in library reference use have been inextricably tied to technological improvements. This article asserts that reference staffing models may be a significant predictor of a decline in reference questions. Using two years of data, collected from a large public university, the researchers determined user preferences among five…

Writing studies and writing center scholars have recently focused much- needed attention on how graduate student writers are taught, mentored, and supported. This scholarship also points to a persistent and stubborn conundrum: Graduate students must write their way into disciplinary belonging, yet most advisors lack a language for, or even…

Overall trends of academic staffing in the US have indicated declines in tenure, increased use of contingent faculty, and stratification of teaching and research efforts. However, little is known about academic staffing patterns in professional programs, and little research has been done using program-level data. The purposes of this study were to…

Building from the existing knowledge of charter school spending and staffing, and with a lens toward better understanding the fiscal flexibility afforded charter schools, this study examines staffing patterns in California's charter schools over the last decade. Using detailed professional assignment data for the universe of California schools in…

This chapter presents a study that explores how faculty composition at independent colleges and universities in the United States has shifted from minimal representation of contingent faculty members in the past to a greater representation presently and the disproportionate expectations and roles placed on these faculty members. Based on the…