As more states adopt the Common Core State Standards, teachers face new challenges. Teachers must unpack these standards and develop explicit learning targets to make these rigorous standards accessible to their students. This task can be especially challenging for special educators who must balance standards-based education with individualized…

In our day, leaders involved in ingenious sustainable development projects plan spaces and implement practices that are beneficial to the environment. These initiatives represent a fertile source of information on the competences linked to environmental design that we should nurture in our students. In view of improving our understanding of the…

For the study we report here we used the theoretical framework of organizational justice to examine academic administrator's perceptions of resource distribution decisions. We asked deans, school directors, and department chairs in one midwestern state about their perceptions of the fairness and likelihood of use of various distribution principles…

In this report, the authors present some initial findings on the early implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California. They report on their interviews with educators in all regions of the state, and on their views of how implementation is proceeding in their schools and districts. The authors then review some of the key…

In 2013 California adopted a new funding formula that includes a significant reinvestment in public education after years of budget cuts. The new law allocates funds differently, directing more resources to students with higher needs and providing more local control and greater transparency. This revolutionary change presents California districts…

Over a period of three years a number of International and African based institutions collaborated to design and create a set of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support school based teacher education as part of the TESSA project. Writing of the materials drew on case studies, experiences and existing resources from across the region using a…

In a 2011 segment on CNN "Headline News," Doug Levin, CEO of the State Educational Technology Director's Association, asserted that the shift to Common Core State Standards, the prevalence of open content, and the rapid increase in the availability of mobile technology will soon make paper textbooks a thing of the past in U.S. schools. He predicts…

As a teacher in a public school system, the author had a different perspective on the need to home school the twice-exceptional learner. She thought that schools could provide differentiation for all students and she thought that certified teachers were the only adults who should be providing instruction. Yet, she realized that there are times…

This paper explores the role of teachers' emotions in adopting new pedagogical tools in urban and remote schools in the Northern Territory. The discussion is illustrated through case study material of Northern Territory teachers who had taken up using a web-based early childhood literacy resource called ABRACADABRA. A sociocultural perspective is…

Sustainability is a core 21st-century movement that stresses keeping interrelationships among the environment, human cultures, and economic systems healthy now--and for future generations--across local, regional, national, and global levels. The ideal sustainable community is able to maintain this balance among the social, environmental, and…

To identify ways that national culture, school characteristics, and individual attributes impact the victimization of students in Grade 8, data from the United States and three East Asian countries (i.e., Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan) were compared using the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Hierarchical Liner…

This paper investigates the rural-urban inequalities in basic education of contemporary China. The China Education Panel Survey (2013-2014) (CEPS) was utilized to analyze the gaps between rural and urban inequality in junior high schools in terms of three domains, which include the equalities of access, inputs, and outcomes. From the sociocultural…

Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS) frequently include the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ITERS-R) as part of rating and improving child care quality. However, studies utilizing the ITERS-R consistently report low quality, especially for basic caregiving items. This research examined whether the low scores reflected the…

In this paper, 218 U.S. faculty responses regarding Open Educational Resources (OER) were qualitatively analyzed. Ten categories emerged in the coding process. The top three categories that indicated barriers to the adoption of OER were "need more information" (faculty wanted more information before they would be willing to adopt OER),…

Learners are the key stakeholders of a school for it to be registered by the Department of Education. However the retention of these learners in Kenya's Secondary Level Education is a great challenge in Kenya. Every secondary school dropout signifies unfulfilled objective, goal and aim for the individual as well as the community at large. The…