Rural schools face difficulties recruiting or retaining qualified teachers. Prospective teachers need help better understanding the nature of rural teaching. Despite many pluses, collegial isolation, low salaries, multiple grade or subject teaching assignments, and lack of familiarity with rural schools and communities are challenges to new…

School improvement is much sought and often claimed. However, it is questionable whether overall achievement in countries such as the USA or England has improved by any significant amount over thirty years. Several school improvement programmes have been claimed as successful, but evaluations, even where they exist, are generally poor: based on…

With the creation of IUFMs (university institutes of teacher training) in the 1990s, the training of teacher trainers in France has become a fundamental part of the renewal of teacher training. It is seen as a fundamental lever for the IUFMs to achieve the tasks and goals entrusted to them: training teachers who need to accommodate the new demands…

Early intervention and preschool special education coordinators in the 50 states and territories were interviewed about the current status of professional development in-service systems in their state. A definition consisting of 8 components of an in-service professional development system was used to analyze the state systems. Twenty Part C early…

The effectiveness of a postsecondary strategic learning course for improving metacognitive awareness and regulation was evaluated through systematic program assessment. The course emphasized students' awareness of personal learning through the study of learning theory and through practical application of specific learning strategies. Students…

In the assessment-driven environment of today's schools, questions about effectiveness and impact on student learning often focus on the school as a whole. An often-missed piece is taking a critical look at specific programs and approaches. Program evaluation is a tool that can help do this. Program evaluation can help to answer a range of…

Creating change is one of the central objectives of faculty development as well as one of the significant challenges. This paper addresses a faculty development intervention called Dialogue which creates pathways to engage faculty in the process of changing their teaching practice. The study of two Dialogue groups in different academic settings…

For over a decade, a number of social work scholars have advocated for an Africentric paradigm shift in social work practice with African Americans; yet the paradigm shift has been slow in coming with respect to infusing Africentric theory and interventions into social work practice, education, and research. Interventions that infuse Africentric…

Working memory plays a crucial role in supporting learning, with poor progress in reading and mathematics characterizing children with low memory skills. This study investigated whether these problems can be overcome by a training program designed to boost working memory. Children with low working memory skills were assessed on measures of working…

The youth mentoring program Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the first social interventions involving youth in Ireland to be evaluated using a randomized controlled trial methodology. This article sets out the design process undertaken, describing how the research team came to adopt a concurrent embedded mixed methods design as a means of…

This paper focuses on content-based and pedagogical instructors' use of cogenerative dialogues to improve instructional practice and to evaluate program effectiveness in a professional development program for high school chemistry teachers. We share our research findings from using cogenerative dialogues as an evaluative tool for general…

Logic models are based on linear relationships between program resources, activities, and outcomes, and have been used widely to support both program development and evaluation. While useful in describing some programs, the linear nature of the logic model makes it difficult to capture the complex relationships within larger, multifaceted…

Purpose: This paper aims to review global adolescent empowerment programmes and develops and proposes a model that can be used with vulnerable adolescents. The model reflects theory and experience drawn from the literature. Design/methodology/approach: The review is a synthesis of articles on empowerment theory, models and programme evaluations.…

In the current climate of high stakes testing and tough love rhetoric, many educational stakeholders have become increasingly reliant on standardized test scores to determine whether or not individual students, teachers, and schools--and even entire districts and states--are successful. In contrast to the black and white picture that test-driven…

The Boston Middle School Corner Store Initiative (CSI) brought together schools, businesses, and community partners to develop, implement, and evaluate a multicomponent pilot program designed to promote healthier beverage purchasing at corner stores among 3,500 middle school students living in Boston, Massachusetts. Healthy drinks were defined for…