The proliferation of high-quality independent charter schools is constrained by the shortage of founders committed to evidence-based school designs and possessing the broad-ranging skills to make good on their audacious plans. The time and energies of such exceptional leaders are deployed over years in building schools that rarely reach more than…

The authors present the results of a self-study by seven preservice teachers that reveals ways in which the teachers' beliefs regarding diversity issues were realized in their classroom interactions, practices, and observations. This investigation was set within the context of a cohort of postbaccalaureate preservice teachers in an initial teacher…

At the 2004 AACC Annual Convention, Sybil Jacobson, president and CEO of MetLife Foundation, announced the two recipients of the 2004 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award. The award, won by City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and Community College of Denver (CCD), honors two colleges that have made great strides in helping…

The goal of the Health Sciences Faculty Education Project at Oregon Health & Science University was to enhance the capacity of health science programs and faculty to admit, teach, accommodate, and graduate students with disabilities. Multiple approaches were implemented to achieve this goal. A key strategy was an inservice training program…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if there was a difference in the internship experience between student interns placed in either an urban Professional Development School or an urban non-Professional Development School. Student interns from two urban universities who have partnerships with neighboring urban school districts…

The last decade has witnessed a growing number of international exchange and training programs for educators, particularly in the areas of social studies. Dramatic changes in Central and Eastern Europe made the western, particularly the American, experience in civic education and teaching for democracy more and more desirable. In many instances,…

As the fifth largest school district in California, Santa Ana Unified School District faces the challenge of providing technology access to its more than 63,000 students and over 6,000 certificated and classified staff members. This article describes how the district found the solution in wireless computing, which is now being used as a highly…

As a university professor who has taught at the teacher education, masters, and doctoral levels, the life of teaching has been an enduring interest, particularly teaching that occurs in K-12 settings. From the author's own work as a K-12 teacher and administrator to her earliest studies of effective teaching and in her own university teaching, she…

School change is inevitable. As a human institution, schools are in a constant state of transformation, and individual teachers adapt or provide the impetus for that transformation all the time. The question, then, is not whether there will be change, but what change there will be--a question complicated by the fact that change means different…

This study reports on the process and outcomes of schoolwide action research by nine schools in their first year as Network members. The participants were a blend of urban, suburban, small town, and rural schools in Central Texas. Focal points of the case studies and cross-case comparison included: (1) how the schools organized for action…

A science content course in food chemistry was offered as a 4-day summer workshop from 1999 to 2001 to 4th grade school teachers in the Seattle School District. The objectives of the workshop were to increase the teachers' knowledge of food science, to perform simple experiments that could be used in the 4th grade classroom, and to help the…

Course delivery mediated by information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly seen as a desirable and cost effective means of providing study opportunities to large numbers of teachers. However, it is unclear to what extent teachers have access to the ICT infrastructure that is required for participation in such study. This paper…

The introduction of an online learning management system (LMS) raises a number of complex issues involving institutional responses at various levels to the adoption and diffusion of technological change. Issues include those related to governance, management and technical support, as well as to core learning and teaching matters associated with…

This study analyzed the implementation of a pre-writing activity that was designed to address L2 student writers' tendency to focus on grammatical accuracy to the exclusion of content and structure. The participants, students in a university-level Spanish composition course, were given a rubric with which to evaluate three previously written…

In both China and the United States, educators are committed to the provision of rigorous academic instruction in inclusive environments to students with disabilities. This paper presents the reflections of the authors from the 2004 U.S.-China Conference on Educating Students with Special Needs held in Beijing, China in June 2004. The authors…