Most educators have spent many days and thousands of dollars attending academic conferences around the world, only to find themselves sitting in ballrooms, listening to speakers and watching PowerPoint presentations. In most cases, this conference format represents a profound pedagogical contradiction for outdoor and experiential educators. This…

Laboratory courses serve as important gateways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. One of the challenges in assessing laboratory learning is to conduct meaningful and standardized practical exams, especially for large multisection laboratory courses. Laboratory practical exams in life sciences courses are frequently…

This paper proposes a coherent and unique set of 12 standards, adopting a neuroscience framework for biologically based on school reform. This model of educational principles and practices aligns with the long-standing principles and practices of the Progressive Education Movement in the United States and the emerging principles of neuroscience.…

Action Learning can be effectively used in both large and small businesses and organizations by employees, stakeholders, or volunteers through this "learning by doing" approach to evaluate an issue or issues of importance to the organization. First developed in the 1940s, Action Learning has increasingly been used as a method to explore questions…

The typical conference consists of a series of PowerPoint presentations that tend to render participants passive. Students of learning have long abandoned the transfer model that underlies such one-way communication. We propose an alternative theory of conferences that sees them as a forum for learning, mutual inspiration and human flourishing. We…

Out-of-school time (OST) is a growing field that includes afterschool, evening, weekend, summer, school-age care, childcare, positive youth development, and workforce development programs (NIOST, 2000). Research demonstrates that OST professional development is critical to program quality and student impact (Weiss, 2005/2006). In an effort to…

A central part of education reform today is the wide-ranging and unprecedented effort to either revamp existing teacher evaluation systems or develop and implement entirely new systems. High-quality teacher evaluation systems are seen as one lever for improving the teacher workforce and hence the outcomes of students, including high school…

The previous article reviewed the range of educational technology professional development session and program goals. In this article, the second part of four-part series, the author presents and explains educational technology-related professional development (ETPD) models. ETPD models can be classified into five general types of professional…

An inservice teacher education model that incorporates theory, observation, practice, and the techniques of coaching helps teachers apply language acquisition research and theory to classroom situations. (DF)

A profession has been defined as a calling requiring specialized knowledge and intensive academic preparation. At the University of Missouri-Columbia, specialized knowledge and intensive academic preparation have been the hallmarks of its program since its inception in 1839. The University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) is the flagship and land-grant…

The training program described consists of 13 modules designed to meet the following objectives: (1) to create an awareness, in preservice and inservice education, of the extent and consequences of sex-role stereotyping at all levels of the educational system; (2) to create an understanding among educators of the ways in which stereotypes limit…

The effectiveness of two approaches used by the Ventura-Santa Barbara County (California) School Resource Network to meet district-wide staff development needs is evaluated in this report. A new inservice training method, characterized by facilitation teams working within schools on site-specific needs, is contrasted to a district-wide topical…

This document examines issues in schoolwide application of career academies. Part 1 reviews the three defining features of career academies: (1) a career academy is a small learning community in which a cluster of students share several classes each year that are taught by the same team of teachers over a period of 2-4 years; (3) each academy…