This action research study focuses on measuring the impact of a Free Voluntary Reading Program on students' active vocabulary use and self-direction in language learning in two different programs of English as a foreign language. The impetus for this research came from close observation and a needs analysis that confirmed students' reluctant…

Has the "Strategy Inventory for Language Learning" (SILL) passed its expiry date? The SILL (Oxford, 1990) was designed as a self-evaluation tool to measure the frequency of language learning strategies used by foreign and second language (L2) learners. With simple mathematics, learners can analyze their strategy preferences overall and…

Whilst historically there has been a widespread consensus that teaching grammar has no impact on students' attainment in writing, more recent research suggests that where a functionally oriented approach to grammar is meaningfully embedded within the teaching of writing, significant improvements in writing can be secured. A recent study, using a…

The aim of this study is to explore the views of science, mathematics and information technologies teachers working in secondary schools and administrators of the schools, in which these teachers are working, regarding STEM. This research is based on a survey model in which quantitative data tools were used to directly obtain the opinions of…

The aim of this study was to investigate whether an online community of practice (OCoP) approach can be a viable alternative form of technology professional development (TPD) for teachers. In line with this aim, the Webheads in Action (WiA) community, members of which were mainly English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers gathered online to…

Research has established that students often consider the delivery of instructor feedback to be a face-threatening event. To minimize the potential negative effects of feedback, verbal and nonverbal face-threat mitigation (FTM) strategies are utilized by instructors. Advances in digital feedback systems, like online documents and learning…

Acquiring English in Puerto Rico involves the perceived advantages of bilingualism in contact with socio-political and economic forces that encourage and constrain the development of a population that is bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English. Using a mixed design we report the perspectives of 86 experienced English teachers on the…

The trend of placing English language learners (ELLs) in mainstream classrooms has teacher education programs developing their capacity to prepare all teachers to educate ELLs. This study examined how universities in Florida implement a professional development requirement to help faculty infuse ELL content into their courses. Our findings suggest…

This study aims to identify the effects of STEM training on the academic achievement of 4th graders in science and mathematics, as well as their views about STEM training. The study group consisted of 4th graders with similar science and mathematics achievement levels from two separate elementary schools with similar socioeconomic profiles in…

Experiences of violence and behaviors that increase the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection are high among women in the United States, and they often intersect (Meyer, Springer, & Altice, 2011; Montgomery et al., 2015; World Health Organization (WHO), 2010). However, there are few evidence-based HIV-prevention interventions that…

This commentary details the process aimed at developing the Inaugural National Leadership Education Research Agenda. The goal of the project is to create a guiding document to assist in further defining Leadership Education as a discipline and provide directional research priorities for that discipline. The commentary provides a foundational…

The role of grammar instruction in the teaching of writing is contested in most Anglophone countries, with several robust meta-analyses finding no evidence of any beneficial effect. However, existing research is limited in that it only considers isolated grammar instruction and offers no theorisation of an instructional relationship between…

We examined reactions to the Race Implicit Association Test (IAT), which has been widely used but rarely examined as an educational tool to raise awareness about racial bias. College students (N = 172) were assigned to read that the IAT reflected either personal beliefs or both personal and extrapersonal factors (single vs. multiple explanation…

There is a strong trend in policy-making circles for strategic, systemic, and large-scale interventions. Although such trends make sense in terms of economy of scale and scope, the political will necessary for making these large-scale interventions a reality is often lacking, and the problem of the transferability of interventions from one local…

Research suggests that spiritual transformation, a change in the way a person considers the sacred, can change medical outcome (Pargament, 2006). Psychometric studies have failed to identify specific factors, but qualitative reports detail an experience that can be reliably shown to have an impact. We report on the development of a rubric for…