One of the mysteries of education reform is how leaders and educators can successfully instantiate, sustain, and spread student-centered pedagogical practices from a few schools to many others. Advocates for "deeper learning" grapple with this mystery as they seek to transform teaching and learning to prepare students to meet the demands…

The purpose of this study was to determine how various factors influence student achievement on the physical science EOCE so that students are provided every opportunity to be successful. An understanding of influences such as the type of mathematics course students are taking, participating in block scheduling, participating in freshmen…

The goal of this paper is to use Knowledge Tracing to augment the results obtained from an experiment that investigated the effects of practice schedules using an intelligent tutoring system for fractions. Specifically, this experiment compared different practice schedules of multiple representations of fractions: representations were presented to…

This report takes a first step toward filling the need for more information on time allocated to schooling. Data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the only nationally representative data source available for identifying variations in time across schools, are used to measure and document in-school time among the nation's…

We present a new approach for the organization of schools, which we call the flexible scheduling paradigm (FSP). FSP improves student learning by dynamically redeploying teachers and other pedagogical resources to provide students with customized learning conditions over shorter time periods called "mini-terms" instead of semesters or years. By…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among bell schedules, GEE 21 science scores, and cumulative GPAs. Factors under consideration included teacher perspective, gender, ethnicity and students' at-risk status. The researcher collected data from the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) targeting seven schools for three…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the impact of flexible scheduling in school libraries on incorporating information literacy skills into the core curriculum. Participants included school librarians from middle schools in neighboring suburban and urban counties. In addition to an open-ended questionnaire, interviews and focus…

Attraction and retention of highly qualified employees has become an area of concern for Australian universities. It has been suggested that flexible work arrangements can be utilised to achieve this goal once the factors affecting their uptake have been identified. This mixed-method study of 495 academic and general staff at an Australian…

In the 1970s, Ontario secondary schools started to adopt the semester system, four courses over the day where there had been seven. With this change, a creative outdoor educator realized that one teacher could take a group of students for all four credits, eliminating the restrictions of the timetable and addressing opportunities to learn in the…

Coinciding with the work requirements of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, the early childhood education program, Head Start, significantly expanded to increase the availability of full-day classes. Using unique administrative data, we examine the effect of full-day compared to half-day attendance on childhood obesity. This effect is identified…

This paper discusses an experiment-based approach to teaching an advanced control engineering syllabus involving controlled plant analysis and modeling, control structures and algorithms, real-time laboratory experiments, and their assessment. These experiments are structured around the representative case of the longitudinal slip control of an…

This article features two documents which can serve as a starting point for a lesson on public service while students debate the amount of pay that public servants should receive. These are: (1) the printed draft of the Constitution showing George Washington's handwritten corrections that eliminated state payments and included the phrase "to be…

Professional educators are called upon to provide effective instruction to student populations that increasingly consist of multiple cultures, languages, and ethnic backgrounds. Based on current special education law, schools are working toward establishing more collaborative cultures by stressing partnerships between general and special education…

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, sponsored by the IRS, offers free tax services for individuals with low-to-moderate incomes, the elderly, disabled and/or those who lack English language proficiency. Although established by the IRS in 1969, it is administered by partnering community based volunteer organizations throughout U.S.,…

This is a narrative article, highlighting effective teaching strategies for teacher candidates at a four-year university in the South. The author examined preconceived negative notions teacher candidates expressed about being enrolled in a Math Block class and having to teach children about mathematics. After involving the teacher candidates in a…