This Ph.D. dissertation is a qualitative case study of a local discourse about teacher preparation in Finland. I have used structuration theory to analyze thirteen semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Participants were faculty and students in a graduate-level program preparing science teachers for upper secondary schools. Findings are presented…

Teaching students to construct scientific understanding is complex. Teachers who develop noticing skills can attend and respond to students' science ideas to move understanding forward. Traditional professional development (PD) approaches limit teachers' opportunities to develop noticing skills. This study examined what aspects of a collaborative…

This study provides a critical appraisal of intermediaries in demand-driven workforce development. In San Francisco East Bay, an emerging set of workforce intermediaries -- here called the "Skills Brokers" -- recently take issue in alleged Skills Gaps to create a cross-sector reform agenda. They seek to connect the supply and demand for…

The Student Outcomes surveys include a series of questions that focus on the specific skills acquired by former students. Many of the skills are employability skills. The former students who responded to the Student Outcomes surveys were very likely to say their institutions helped them develop skills and that those skills were useful for…

Ibero-America is a land of untapped potential. The region is young, facing a unique demographic opportunity. This demographic bonus opens a window of opportunity for inclusive growth in the region, with equitable and high-quality education being a potential driver of domestic growth to support future progress. The social and economic progress of…

Practitioner knowledge, as the center for change in teacher education, is the heart of The Carnegie Project of the Educational Doctorate (CPED) program. Margaret Lata and Susan Wunder explain a key principal of CPED is to grow practitioners as change agents, through the development of a Problem of Practice. In their article, Investing in the…

Improving collegiate women's access to and retention in engineering requires a multifaceted approach. Though a majority of existing interventions are aimed at changing women, strengthening their skills, and increasing their networks, little emphasis is directed at addressing the institutional factors that influence women's opportunities for…

This ethnographic case study aims to examine second language socialization (SLS) in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) called "Stronghold Kingdoms" (SK). To explore the affordances of this community for SLS, the social dynamics in a faction community during 4 life-time periods, namely, war, post-war peace and life in exile, end…

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a learning method considered to be capable of changing the students' perception in facing the challenges of the 21st century. This study was aimed to improve soft skills in the form of critical thinking, motivation, and group dynamics and hard skills in the form of psychomotor ability by applying PBL. This study was…

According to the author, a teacher might both feed the soul and heed the voice of others. National Writing Project's (NWP) Summer Invitational Institute (SI) provides this opportunity. Since its first SI in 2007, Ozarks Writing Project (OWP), an NWP site at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, has been helping southwest Missouri…

Background: More than half of the children in the world experience some form of interpersonal violence every year. As compared with high-income countries, policy responses in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are limited due to resource constraints and paucity of evidence for effective interventions to reduce violence against children in…

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a peer-led academic support program in which SI Leaders help students develop study habits and note-taking strategies as well as facilitate test preparation. While the effects of SI on students receiving the instruction have been thoroughly investigated, there have been far fewer studies that have assessed the…

Theory and limited research indicate that race and socioeconomic status (SES) interact dynamically to shape children's developmental contexts and academic achievement, but little scholarship examines how race and SES intersect to shape Black-White achievement gaps across development. We used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,…

Far too often African American boys are negatively portrayed in the media and are labeled as at-risk and violent. These labels impact perceptions within public schools. They also decrease self-efficacy, lower academic motivation, and lessen attachment to the school and community. We conceptualized a psychoeducational group for African American…

This paper reports the use of Google Docs in a master's degree program as an online tool for collaborative co-construction of knowledge and self-assessment. Participants included eighty graduate teachers in a master's degree. The study employed a mixed method approach. Among the tools applied were a questionnaire, focus group discussions,…