The purchase of 21st-century technologies for each middle school teacher in my school system coinciding with a historic lack of significant professional development in technology integration provided the impetus for the study. To address the problem, professional development focused on helping teachers use student response systems and mobile…

This paper focused on whether the use of online discussion boards can enhance the quality of interaction in the middle and high school English classroom, covering both the characteristics of online discussion boards and potential negative effects of their features. The features of online discussion boards, their effects, and how these boards…

Formative coaching, an approach that uses student work as the foundation for mentoring and professional development, can help principals become more effective instructional leaders. In formative coaching, teaches and coaches analyze student work to determine next steps for instruction. This article shows how a principal can use the steps of the…

Introduction: Although evaluating at multiple outcome levels has been proposed for continuing education activities and programs, it is a complex undertaking and is not done routinely, especially in collaborative, multicomponent programs. This article reports on strategies used and results obtained in an evaluation project that examined multiple…

The purpose of this article is to explore the use of a lesson-planning template designed to support and scaffold pre-service teachers' lesson-planning techniques for a wide range of learners in inclusive classrooms. This template is currently used across the final three semesters of a dual certification inclusive elementary and special education…

In the last decades, many education researchers have been trying to use computerized learning environments to enhance student learning. Without proper instructional supports and guidance, however, students often failed to acquire knowledge from computer-based learning activities. The objective of this study was to demonstrate how research-based…

Knowing what students should be able to accomplish academically is the first step in knowing how to write accurate Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. By giving students short Curriculum-Based Measurements (CBM) in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics, teachers are able to determine current level of performance, or baseline. Teachers…

Men who have sex with men (MSM) represent more than half of all new HIV infections in the United States. Utilizing a collaborative, community-based approach, a brief risk reduction intervention was developed and pilot tested among newly HIV-diagnosed MSM receiving HIV care in a primary care setting. Sixty-five men, within 3 months of diagnosis,…

In this article we describe the design and implementation of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education's (NCRECE's) college-level course and its delivery to teachers across 10 settings and 15 instructional sections. This professional development intervention, found effective in changing teachers' beliefs, knowledge, and actual…

This article describes the implementation and outcomes, as perceived by the professional learning providers and school principals, of a professional learning (PL) model devised in response to recognition that models of PL that are effective in urban settings are not effective in rural and remote areas. Rather than expecting the teachers to travel…

This study examines the formative evaluation practices of 13 experienced elementary school teachers in Quebec, Canada at the level of teacher-student interaction. The qualitative study is based on both semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews as well as videotapes of classroom activities. The participating teachers were found to be using…

How can teachers be helped, at relatively little expense, to improve their professional practice? This problem was addressed in "Improving Formative Assessment in Vocational Education and Adult Literacy, Language and Numeracy Programmes"--the IFA project. Adopting a specific problem-based methodology as part of an action research…

Family members and educational teams frequently participate in planning, implementing, and evaluating programs for young children with disabilities and those at risk for academic and behavior difficulties. Decision making should incorporate an integration of best available research evidence along with practitioners' and families' beliefs and…

This article presents procedures and results from a 2-year project developing science key vocabulary (KV) short tests suitable for progress monitoring Grade 5 science in Texas public schools using computer-generated, -administered, and -scored assessments. KV items included KV definitions and important usages in a multiple-choice cloze format. A…

The goal of this article is to contribute to the validation of a self-evaluation method, which can be used by schools to evaluate the quality of their Competence Assessment Program (CAP). The outcomes of the self-evaluations of two schools are systematically compared: a novice school with little experience in competence-based education and…