Despite South Africa's high spending in education compared to other sub-Saharan countries, its education system is often criticized as ineffective as evidenced by poor student outcomes in both national and international assessments. This educational inefficiency is often linked to poor teacher quality, particularly in mathematics and science where…

States that receive federal waivers to the No Child Left Behind Act were required to implement reforms in designated "Focus Schools" that contribute to achievement gaps. We examine the performance effects of such "differentiated accountability" reforms in Louisiana. These Focus School reforms emphasized school-needs assessments…

Needs analysis (NA) has long been argued to be the prerequisite for the design of language curricula or syllabi and the selection of tasks. According to Long (2005), a one-size-fits-all approach should be substituted by a careful examination of learners' needs in a particular domain or learner community. Despite the increasing practice of carrying…

English as a second language teachers often find themselves teaching classes of heterogeneous students who have very divergent English language skills, abilities, and learning needs. One effective approach to address some of the challenges teachers face when teaching heterogeneous, mixed-level classes is task-based language teaching (TBLT). TBLT…

States that receive federal waivers to the No Child Left Behind Act were required to implement reforms in designated "Focus Schools" that contribute to achievement gaps. We examine the performance effects of such "differentiated accountability" reforms in Louisiana. These Focus School reforms emphasized school-needs assessments…

States across the country are urgently building and initiating systems to improve schools, including those identified as low-performing under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). With their state ESSA plans approved by the U.S. Department of Education in 2017-2018, state education agencies (SEAs) are moving forward to carry out the vision,…

Strada Education Network is collaborating with Gallup, the world leader in consumer insights, to launch the Education Consumer Pulse. Through 350 daily interviews of U.S. adults ages 18 to 65, this three-year survey will create the largest set of education consumer insights in the nation to date. The author believes that understanding the…

The Extension Committees on Organization and Policy adopted a new Health and Wellness Framework with six priority areas. A health insurance literacy team was appointed to assess current system efforts and develop research, programs, and professional development opportunities. Survey results show that finance educators were the most likely…

The concept of "adaptive leadership" refers to principles that allow professionals and organizations to respond effectively in challenging circumstances. This article presents the personal reflections of a ZERO TO THREE Fellow on selected adaptive leadership principles in action. The author explains how adaptive leadership tools informed…

This article reports on the design of the Professional Development Needs Analysis Questionnaire for Deputy Principals (PDNAQ) to measure the problems they experienced and the skills they needed. In the literature, no validated questionnaire to measure the problems experienced and skills needed by deputy principals in South African schools was…

Teacher research has been identified as a transformative model of CPD. However, as illustrated in the OECD's TALIS study, while teachers recognise the benefits of classroom enquiry for their own work, their participation in it is low. This paper examines the possible reasons for this discrepancy by considering the views of Irish teachers surveyed…

The development of interactive multimedia CD-based teaching materials is urgent because the learning process in the Arabic Education Department is not 100% done as expected. This can be seen from some indicators that have not been achieved in the teaching and learning process. First, the lecturers teaching the same courses of Arabic language…

An adequate supply of a high quality labor force is crucial for national economic and social well-being; consequently, nations worldwide have placed significant emphasis on university graduate employability. Nonetheless, in Taiwan, a mismatch between knowledge acquired in universities and competences required by the job market has dramatically…

In 2013, VA became the first state to mandate the use of threat assessment teams in its K-12 public schools. We provide an account of the development and adaptation of threat assessment as a school safety practice and research on the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines in VA schools. We describe the state law and the question of whether…

The aim of this study is to develop a lesson plan for the "Graphics and Animation in Education" course lectured in the department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT). For this purpose, a "Needs Analysis Form for Graphics and Animation in Education Course" that includes open ended questions is produced by…