Over her 30-year career as a certified teacher, researcher, and university teacher educator, the author has planned, facilitated and refined educational experiences for children from pre-kindergarten through adolescence, as well as for adults who teach (or were preparing to teach) in New York, Connecticut, Texas, and Arizona. During the summer of…

The study-abroad internship option for students is one example of a transformational learning opportunity (TLO) that is becoming increasingly popular in programs offered by colleges and universities in the United States (Alfaro, 2008; Cushner & Mahon, 2002). These TLOs often have the potential to broaden, enrich, or augment student learning and…

With teacher turnover costing the U.S. as much as $7 billion per year (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2007), and the continuing demand for qualified teachers, it is imperative for schools to increase retention rates among their faculty (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Retention efforts are especially important among novice…

Differentiated instruction is a widely held practice used by teachers to provide diverse learners with complex learning opportunities in the area of mathematics. Research on differentiated instruction shows a multitude of factors that support high quality instruction in mixed-ability elementary classrooms. These factors include small-class size,…

Teacher self-efficacy, grounded in social cognitive theory, has been shown to be an important component of teaching effectiveness. There are 6.2 million teachers who are mandated to follow the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Studies addressing perceptions of NCLB and teacher self-efficacy are lacking in the literature. The…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between the credentials held by science teachers who taught at a school that administered the Science Texas Assessment on Knowledge and Skills (Science TAKS), the state standardized exam in science, at grade 11 and student performance on a state standardized exam in science administered in grade…

The overarching purpose behind this evaluation was to gauge the impact of AP professional development (PD) on AP student outcomes in a state with a significant rate of PD implementation. The evaluation attempted to predict the level of student AP performance by the number of AP professional development events attended by teachers in that school in…

The overarching purpose behind this evaluation was to gauge the impact of AP® professional development (PD) on AP student outcomes in a state with a significant rate of PD implementation. The evaluation attempted to predict the level of student AP performance by the number of AP professional development events attended by teachers in that school…

Using a causal-comparative research design, this study analyzed and compared absence data of teachers in relation to specific teacher demographics to determine if certain teachers were more susceptible to absenteeism than others. Additionally, school level placement and whether or not a teacher was teaching in a Title I school were analyzed to…

This study investigated the effects of teacher sense of efficacy for literacy instruction on reading achievement in grades three through eight. In previous studies, a teacher's sense of efficacy was shown to be correlated to student achievement (Ashton & Webb, 1986; Moore & Esselman, 1992). However, research attempting to uncover the…

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between high-stakes tests and stress with secondary teachers. Furthermore, this study investigated whether veteran teachers experience more stress than novice teachers and whether or not self-efficacy, gender, accountability status, and years of experience influence teacher stress as it…

Conceptions of learning and teaching shape teaching practices and are, therefore, important to understanding how engineering professors learn to teach. There is abundant research about professors' conceptions of teaching; however, research on the conceptions of teaching of doctoral students, the future professors, is scarce. Furthermore,…

During the 1970s, an estimated 3 million children with disabilities received inappropriate or inadequate educational services, and an additional almost 1 million children were excluded from the educational system (U. S. Department of Education as cited by Smith, Polloway, Patton, & Dowdy, 2004). Most of the programs that existed were limited…

Many questions concerning quality of functioning and effectiveness are connected with the management of education as a professional field in educational organizations. The role of educational leadership in an educational organization raises many questions related to legislative regulations of activities, issues of institutional placement,…

The purpose of this study was to generate an understanding of the experiences of mathematics teachers examining recommendations for Reasoning and Sense Making (NCTM, 2009) and investigating them in their practice. Narrative inquiry incorporates the voices of teachers and illustrates the phenomenon studied through narratives of participants'…