How could far more children ages 0-5 who are in early childhood education and care settings have consistent access to excellent teaching? In these critical developmental years, young children--especially those who have fewer educational and developmental advantages outside of formal settings--need "excellent teaching every year" to…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires local education agencies to include parents as equal team members in the cultivation of their child's individual education plan (IEP). Despite law, studies have shown that parents experience barriers to being included in the process. Barriers such as a lack of information, lack of…

This book helps educational leaders provide support for students who face significant barriers to college access, success, and retention. The authors offer research-based, practical guidance to allow readers to evaluate these issues within their local context, create and implement a plan of action, and sustain those efforts over time. Vignettes…

In "Where Teachers Thrive," Susan Moore Johnson outlines a powerful argument about the importance of the school as an organization in nurturing high-quality teaching. Based on case studies conducted in fourteen high-poverty, urban schools, the book examines why some schools failed to make progress, while others achieved remarkable…

The purpose of the "Drivers Best Practices Assessment" ("DBPA") is to assist organizations in assessing their current supports and resources for quality use of selected programs or practices. Specifically, organizations can use it to: (1) Identify strengths and opportunities for improvement in their current supports and…

In the United States, there has been an increased emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and especially engineering, in pre-college settings. There are several potential benefits of this, including: increasing the quantity and diversity of students who pursue STEM careers, improving all students' technological…

Software Effort Estimation is one of the most challenging aspects in the software development life cycle. Recent empirical studies in the area of software development estimation indicate the presence of two models for effort estimation: (i) Formal, and (ii) Expert Based (Informal). The IT sector in Palestine is one of the most promising and…

Workplace incivility, or bullying, experienced by nurses has been shown to have negative consequences on nurses and the care they provide patients. Nurses' roles are being challenged in the healthcare environment because of incivility in the workplace. These negative outcomes exist despite the support provided by teams on which these nurses work.…

Teachers in high-poverty schools often feel stressed and fatigued. We might expect that if we ask these teachers to take on even more work by meeting regularly in collaborative improvement teams, they will respond with skepticism, even resentment. But in a study of 83 teachers in six outstanding high-poverty schools, these researchers found the…

When Texas state budgets resulted in a loss of direct funding for the transition of deaf and hard of hearing students', collaboration efforts for assisting these students became critical. Theresa Johnson, MEd, outreach specialist at the Educational Resource Center on Deafness in Austin, and John A. Serrano, MA, director of Academic Affairs at the…

Adapting a Team of Teams model to a school environment provides a framework for a collaborative team culture based on trust, common vision, purposeful conversations, and interconnectivity. School leaders facilitate collaboration by modeling teamwork, as well as transparency and adaptability, to create a positive school culture and thereby improve…

With the tide of globalization, the external environment that schools face turns uncertain and complex. In response to the new challenges, teacher teams need to manage boundaries to maintain the sustainable development. The two studies reported in this paper, aimed to examine the boundary activities of teacher teams of middle schools in China. In…

This study sought to define the attributes and practices of organized fossil groups (e.g., clubs, paleontological societies) as amateur paleontologists, as well as those of professional paleontologists, and explore the potential for these two groups to work collaboratively as a formalized community. Such an investigation is necessary to develop…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is a critical competency in a variety of contexts, including the workplace, school, and home. However, only recently have assessment and curriculum reformers begun to focus to a greater extent on the acquisition and development of CPS skill. One of the major challenges in psychometric modeling of CPS is…

The goals of differentiation are laudable, but in recent years, many question whether it is really possible for a teacher to tailor instruction for 20 to 30 different students and whether it's desirable to differentiate by learning styles. Differentiation is just one factor in effective instruction. Supervisors who walk into a classroom looking…