The issue of sustaining and scaling up professional development for mathematics teachers raises several fundamental issues for researchers. This commentary addresses various definitions for sustainability and scaling up and how these definitions may affect the design of programs as well as the design of research. We consider four of the papers in…

Despite the number of studies investigating the perceived effectiveness of campus-based leadership development programming among undergraduates, most have focused on programme outcomes and few have investigated the role of the campus environment in enhancing students' motivation to lead, particularly in non-Western contexts. To address these gaps,…

The Walton Family Foundation was at a pivotal point in early 2015. After investing $1.3 billion in K-12 education over the previous two decades, executive and board leadership were reflecting on past work, and charting a course for the Foundation's strategic direction based on key learnings from their investments in education. The Walton Family…

This paper reports on research conducted on the effectiveness and relevance of authentic assessment in a Mobile Application Development course, answering the research question "How practical is authentic assessment in Digital Media courses?" To facilitate this research, students were provided a set of tasks that consisted of developing a…

The United States Department of Education's (the Department's) "FY 2014 Annual Performance Report" (APR) and "FY 2016 Annual Performance Plan" (APP) provide information relative to the "FY 2014-18 Strategic Plan." Again this year, the Department has consolidated its APR and APP in an effort to provide a more complete…

This study examined the effect of peer coaching on the development of effective teaching behaviors and teacher self-efficacy of education students in an early field experience. The convenience sample (N = 99) included undergraduate students enrolled in a required foundational course in special education at a large public university in the southern…

It is generally believed that Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce has a great impact on business performance improvement. Considerable research also shows that another dependent variable, B2B e-commerce success, can be a good overall measure of B2B systems. This paper investigated and examined the impact of several factors, which are either…

This paper represents an attempt to make a theoretical contribution to its knowledge base through an analysis of the group factors which contribute to the success of women academics engaged in research within the area of social sciences. The data were obtained through a series of in-depth interviews carried out at public universities in Catalonia,…

2012 was a year of rapid change for education with the advent of MOOCs--Massive Open Online Courses--available for the world to use to learn for free. But what does this mean for the role of the librarian? How has the landscape in education changed, and what are the issues and challenges that librarians now face? This article reviews the position…

This article presents a case study that examines the link between leadership's competencies and exemplary performance of Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program's leaders by analyzing opinions and perceptions of fellows who attended U.S. universities from 2005 to 2012. Since 1979, fellows have participated in the program sponsored by the U.S.…

Through the study of leadership, the concept of leadership effectiveness and its importance has emerged. Effective leadership contributes to successful organizations (Amagoh, 2009; Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1999). According to Gordon & Yukl (2004), because of constantly changing environments, it is important to continue research in…

Facing relentless pressure to improve student achievement, many states and districts are using coaching as a policy lever to promote changes in practice. This special issue centers on the policies and politics of coaching, and this editorial commentary highlights what we know about the role of coaches and coaching in the field of education. Then I…

This research used data from educators and teacher candidates in Ohio (a state in the Midwestern United States) to produce a valid and reliable instrument for measuring instructional coaching skills. The research involved three pilot tests with large samples of respondents. Initial items came from the extant literature on instructional coaching,…

Education has a long-standing practice of turning worthwhile learning goals into lists of bits. One might even say that this practice is the original sin in curriculum design: take a complex whole, divide it into small pieces, string those together in a rigid sequence of instruction and testing, and call completion of this sequence…

The purpose of this study was to extend the research on adolescents' motivation for reading by examining important group differences and the relation of motivation to standardized achievement. Adolescents (N = 406) ranging from grade 7 to grade 12 completed a self-report survey that assessed 13 different aspects of their reading motivation…