This study focused upon the micropolitics of teacher leadership, namely the knowledge of tactics, influencing factors and consequences of teacher leaders' daily political interactions with others within the school setting. Blase (1990, 1997) and Blase and Anderson (1995) acknowledge that teachers are not passive actors in the politics of schools,…

Current legal mandates require that students with disabilities in K-12 settings have access to assistive technology (AT) devices and services. Therefore, educational teams serving students with Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) must consider various ATs and identify services to support their implementation in educational settings.…

Educational research in cooperative learning suggests that inequity based on perceived status may be an issue with heterogeneous cooperative learning groups. This paper explores issues of status based on race, ethnicity and cultural background in the New Zealand tertiary classroom where there is a diverse mix of domestic and international…

Classroom assessment techniques have been advocated for use in the college classroom for over 20 years. The authors of this paper formed a new teaching technique, "the ticket to retention" ("TtR"), one that changes classroom assessment techniques so that the emphasis is on student retention of concepts. This technique combines…

Little is known about levels of personal growth attributed by students to typical college life experiences. This paper documents two studies of student self-reported and posttraumatic growth and compares growth levels across populations. Both studies measure student attributions of cause to academic and non-academic experiences, respectively. It…

This study documents and describes efforts to develop robust forms of pre-service teachers' pedagogical content knowledge through a culturally responsive mathematics teaching approach. Embedded in a university K-8 mathematics methods course emphasising the connections among mathematics, children's mathematical thinking, and children's…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools in rural areas, do not operate classroom music programs due to a shortage of qualified staff and with access to tertiary music education rapidly diminishing in regional Victoria, there is little indication that the situation will improve. This paper reports on a mixed methods research project that…

This paper explores two different schools' approaches to implementing an iPad program and a Netbook program to a year level of students. The aim of the study was to determine how these mobile devices were being used in the classroom and whether they enhanced teaching and learning. The experiences of students and parents were obtained through…

This study implemented an exploratory mixed-methods design to better understand how the characteristics of a principal, specifically the strategies, behaviors, and actions, lead to the perception of empowerment as perceived by the teachers themselves. An expert panel identified three "highly successful" principals assigned to elementary…

Nations throughout the world have increasingly looked at teacher education policy as a vehicle for reform of both the educational system and the society at large, and teacher quality is often positively associated with the quality of the overall educational system. Although such reforms often target pre-service teacher education, little is known…

When a coach empathetically listens to another person's ideas, thoughts, and concerns, the coach communicates that the other person's life is important and meaningful. This may be the most important service that a coach can provide. (Knight, 2007, p.43) This study explored whether instructional coaches that completed the 20-hour…

The purpose of this research was to understand the development of teachers' perception of self-efficacy as a result of reflective conversations conducted between a principal/school administrator and a teacher. Self-efficacy, based on social cognitive theory, is dependent upon the perceived level of competency or mastery of the individual and their…

This is a quasi-experimental mixed methods study of a curriculum intervention focused on the interdisciplinary teaching of history, literacy, and the visual arts. In this study I address three questions: (1) How does students' learning in history change following their participation in an interdisciplinary history-literacy-visual arts…

The purpose of this study was to compare growth in student achievement of students in a classroom where the assessment for learning process was either absent from or present in a teacher's practices, and to gather the teacher's and students' perceptions of the benefits and barriers related to growth in student achievement when the…

The overarching aim of this mixed methods study was to explore the online experiences of students with disabilities, with particular focus on students' use of assistive technologies, mobile media and self-efficacy. Using a multifaceted an integrative approach, this study considered a framework of universal design, Scherer's Matching Person and…