Internship programs too often do not provide the types of experiences that effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice and prepare school leaders who are capable of leading and transforming schools. To help address this problem, the current study is directed at providing insight into practicing principals' views of the types of…

Research investigating graduate teaching assistants' (TAs') knowledge of fundamental statistics concepts is sparse at best; yet at many universities, TAs play a substantial role in the teaching of undergraduate statistics courses. This paper provides a framework for characterizing TAs' content knowledge in a sampling context and endeavors to raise…

This empirical mixed methods study examines educators' understandings of student risk factors. The research was conducted in a Title 1 combination middle high school in the Florida panhandle that had been open for three years and had received a grade of F school in each of these years. In Florida, schools are graded according to the Florida…

Background: This study reflects a growing concern with the placement of people with intellectual disabilities and complex mental health problems in out of area placements at a distance from their families and communities. Materials and methods: We interviewed service users (n = 17) living in out of area in-patient psychiatric units using a…

Using means-end theory, this study evaluates how being part of a group influences outcomes of National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) participants. This study examines outcomes from NOLS courses during the summer of 2006 in the Wind River Mountain Range of Wyoming. Immediately following 2006 course completion, a convenience sample of 345…

This paper describes the life experiences of graduate students who were satisfied with their graduate careers at a research-oriented university in Taiwan. A qualitative phenomenological method was used, with in-depth interviews for data collection. Participants included 17 master's students and eight doctoral students. Four themes emerged as…

Past research has found that many pre-university L2 learners, having completed an Intensive English Program (IEP) still have difficulty in undertaking various disciplines in English-speaking tertiary institutions and continue to exhibit numerous linguistic problems (Bialystok, 2001, Celce Murcia 2001). The purpose of this paper is to present the…

Teachers in various contexts worldwide are sometimes unfairly criticized for not putting teaching methods developed for the well-resourced classrooms of Western countries into practice. Factors such as the teachers' "misconceptualizations" of "imported" methods, including Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), are often blamed,…

Quality educational leadership preparation has positive influences on practices of graduates. In the Finnish decentralized education system, little is yet known about the sources of principals' practices. This research explores the sources of principals' self-assessed leadership practices in Central Finland and identifies areas for more emphasis.…

In response to the research priorities of members of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), this study investigated language learners' realworld tasks in mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) to inform the future development of pedagogic tasks for academic English as a second language (ESL) courses. The data included…

One quality indicator of intervention research is the extent to which the intervention has a high degree of social validity, or practicality. In this study, I drew on Wolf's framework for social validity and used qualitative methods to ascertain five middle schoolteachers' perceptions of the social validity of System 44®--a phonics-based reading…

The main purpose of this study is to determine how power usage styles of administrators of faculties of education influence the organizational culture in their respective faculties in Turkey. Using the phenomenological method, a qualitative research method, researchers studied a group comprised of 20 academics from 7 different colleges of…

This study investigated code-mixing practices, specifically the use of L2 (English) in an L1 (Chinese) class in a U.S. bilingual program. Our findings indicate that the code-mixing practices made and prompted by the teacher served five pedagogical functions: (a) to enhance students' bilingualism and bilingual learning, (b) to review and…

Assessment is a complex function requiring an understanding of student learning, assessment principles, practices, and purposes of data to implement effective classroom assessment. The purpose of this study was to add to the growing base of knowledge about teachers' engagement with assessment data and their motivation for classroom assessment.…

Problem Statement: The "right selection" of doctoral candidates is of great importance for the effectiveness of doctoral programs. There are programs in which one can directly begin with the dissertation, as well as programs that require the completion of credits through mandatory and elective courses. It is widely accepted that academic…