The launch of independent Ed.D. programs in 2007 at campuses of the California State University (CSU) is significant for its large program size and timing amidst national debate on Ed.D. programs. These applied programs for practitioners require a traditional dissertation based on rigorous research that address problems of practice. This…

An experiment examined whether beginning readers can successfully learn to detect and define homonyms, and whether this ability correlates with vocabulary and/or phonological awareness. First graders received ambiguity instruction involving homonyms in isolation, in riddles, and in text. A control group received reading lessons without a…

Studies on second language (L2) learners' strategies tended to characterize strategies as individual learners' cognitive predispositions or personality traits, leaving a critical question unanswered: Why do learners use different strategies in different contexts? From a sociocultural perspective, this article pursued this question by focusing on…

Science educators are confronted with the challenge to accommodate in their classes an increasing cultural and linguistic diversity that results from globalization. Challenged by the call to work towards valuing and keeping this diversity in the face of the canonical nature of school science discourse, we propose a new way of thinking about and…

This study aims to capture both how the participants' genre awareness becomes embedded in their stances through genre-based writing instruction in an EFL context and also how viable multi-genre portfolio use is in genre-based EFL writing instruction. The qualitative data were gathered from several sources: (1) the participants' annotations of…

This paper examines a group of secondary mathematics teachers who met 16 times to discuss video excerpts of their teaching. The explicit purpose of the meetings was to assist the teachers in preparing video for submission to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Analysis of meeting transcripts reveals that teachers engaged in…

In the context of international consensus that the knowledge economy requires more highly educated people, the Australian federal, state and territory governments agreed on a set of policies and targets for lifting the minimum level of educational attainment of young people, which are analysed in Part 1 of this paper. This "Compact with young…

This study analyses Russian-speaking immigrant parents' beliefs and attitudes toward the education of their children in German and Israeli bilingual kindergartens. Why did the parents chose bilingual education? Which convergences and divergences exist in parents' beliefs, expectations and attitudes toward bilingual kindergartens in Germany and…

What occurs when an African American woman professor and a European American woman professor review narrative data and interpret what the students write differently? This research illustrates how race and the experience of two ethnically different female researchers impact data analysis of teachers' interactions with narratives of personal past…

A key concept in contemporary Catholic educational discourse makes a distinction between religious education and catechesis. This distinction is based on the assumptions of faith commitment on the part of catechesis and the focus on cognitive outcomes on the part of religious education. Many official documents on Canadian Catholic school…

This article examines how educational disparities in mortality emerge, grow, decline, and disappear across causes of death in the United States, and how these changes contribute to the enduring association between education and mortality over time. Focusing on adults age 40 to 64 years, we first examine the extent to which educational disparities…

I use the metaphor "zebra crossing" in my reflective narrative to describe my plight and struggle as a non-white person growing up and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the apartheid era. This article considers and compares the notions of culture, diversity and identity as I now work in a tertiary institution in Melbourne,…

Background: Dealing with complex issues per definition bears the burden of imperfection. Whatever comforting theoretical concepts may promise, real life complexity will take its messy toll once travelling from conceptual ambition to real life practice. We specifically reflect on the social scientific contribution to these inter- and…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the impact of school leadership, particularly that of the principal (head teacher), on school improvement in England. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a mixed-methods (MM), longitudinal design to investigate the leadership of a sample of academically effective and improving schools identified from…

Over the past two decades, the perceived failed promise of the comprehensive high school to effectively educate America's youth has generated a national interest in high school reform. One such area of reform is a movement to restructure high schools as small learning communities centered around unique curriculum and state-of-the-art teaching.…