Teachers need comprehensive support to improve students' literacy. This Policy Update shares how state boards of education can provide this holistic support to improve through: (1) better teacher preparation standards in early literacy; (2) professional development guidance; (3) high-quality literacy coaches and other support professionals; and…

This paper examines how government approaches to education were contested by Aboriginal communities in the late 1930s, through organised political actions designed in part to ensure access to the same standard of education and schooling available to non-Aboriginal people. It explores some of the ways that Aboriginal campaigns for education were…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine how integrative STEM teachers utilize the "Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy" (STEL) to foster and assess 21st-century learning in technology and engineering classes at multiple Virginia public secondary schools. The theory guiding this study was Kolb's…

Observation-based frameworks of instructional quality differ largely in the approach and the purposes of their development, their theoretical underpinnings, the instructional aspects covered, their operationalization and measurement, as well as the existing evidence on reliability and validity. The current paper summarizes and reflects on these…

In 1993, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dramatically overhauled its K-12 education system and created a new school finance formula, building an educational accountability structure to ensure every child has access to a high-quality education. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) established academic standards in core subjects, mandated…

Practice guidelines for early childhood education (ECE) and clinical autism interventions (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention, NDBI) have emerged separately in history, represent different disciplines, and operate within different service systems in the United States. This article identifies priorities, principles, and practices…

This paper uncovers the sustainability content in the science and mathematics curriculum of Qatar's K-12 public school system. It focuses on mapping the curriculum standards of both subjects against sustainable development goals (SDGs) and identifying the existing gap. The mapping, using a key-words approach, of sustainability concepts based on UN…

The study introduces exemplary explicit teaching strategies as enacted by a middle school STEAM teacher. Through a 10-lesson climate change STEAM program, data were collected to explore explicit teaching strategies using O-TOP (Oregon Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation [OCEPT] Teaching Observation Protocol) and NGSS 8 Practices (Next…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have described discipline-specific literacy skills needed to successfully engage with science concepts, and science assessments ask students to use language in many and varied forms to mediate their science thought and actions and prove mastery of content. Yet…

In this paper we analyse what standardization is and what it, with special reference to its application in education. For this we also show that standardization is a device of prevailing neoliberal policies. Such policies, contrary to established rhetoric, do not diminish the role of the state and administrations, but rather increase it, by…

Graciela Chera is hesitant to talk about herself and her classroom. She claims that she is not doing anything special, yet she is clearly making a powerful impact on her students and the English-teaching community in Paraguay. In this article, learn how Graciela Chera balances academic rigor with fun team spirit as she teaches students of all ages…

Maximizing classroom time to include meaningful content-based learning with fun engaging activities that simultaneously challenge and encourage students is a hallmark of a successful school day. This article shares one instructional approach that does a model eliciting activity (MEA). A MEA is a real-world, problem-based scenario framed around a…

Established in 1992, Ofsted is championed by government ministers as the guardian of educational standards in schools and colleges. Ofsted has never produced any research on the validity of its inspection judgements. Ofsted has no evidence, other than rising percentages of schools being awarded positive Ofsted grades, to support its assertion that…

Mastery grading is an approach to grading in which students are assigned term grades based on whether they meet certain enumerated objectives, rather than accumulating points. In this note, I describe my experiences using a mastery system, which I call techniques grading, which applies the insights behind the standards-based and specifications…

The ambitious goals of standards-based reform call for both technical and adaptive leadership to address problems of practice involving the technical and adaptive alignment of teachers' instruction to the standards. Thus, standards-aligned curriculum implementation necessitates both types of strategies; otherwise, adaptive challenges will persist.…