Local issues that combine economic, environmental, and equity impacts make excellent contexts for interdisciplinary teaching. An instructional unit, "Should We Use Wood for Energy? A High School Education Program," was developed by the University of Florida's School of Forest Resources and Conservation to engage high school students in…

This paper deals with the topic of professional development programmes' impact. Concepts and ideas of action research, constructivism, and systems theory are used as a theoretical framework and are combined to describe and analyse an exemplary professional development programme in Austria. Empirical findings from both quantitative and qualitative…

Using their "license to snoop," performance architects uncover the nuances of how work gets done in an organization. This is the first of a four-part series in which each article will present a different organizational level. Typical performance issues and opportunities for each level will be discussed, and helpful models and tools will be shared.…

For the past 12 years, the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) has offered an innovative means for colleges and universities to maintain regional accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the only regional U.S. accrediting commission currently providing alternative pathways for maintaining accreditation. Although all HLC…

We examine the contributions of dynamic systems theory to the field of cognitive development, focusing on modeling using dynamic neural fields. After introducing central concepts of dynamic field theory (DFT), we probe empirical predictions and findings around two examples--the DFT of infant perseverative reaching that explains Piaget's A-not-B…

Veteran Superintendent Paul Vallas, who has led turnaround efforts in major urban districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, has started a new venture that he expects will broaden his reach and extend the reform movement. The Vallas Group, headed by Vallas, now interim superintendent of the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Public Schools, is…

Since the early 1990s, European higher education has been undergoing drastic changes with regard to the organisation and governance of academic work. The political emphasis on higher education autonomy and accountability went hand in hand with the introduction of market type steering devices and a new discourse regarding the universities'…

Purpose: The reported research aims to examine the extent to which sustainability capabilities have been delivered by a specific example of Education for Sustainability (EfS) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and how important the capabilities have been in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach Students who participated in an…

Professional learning is crucial for the ongoing development of teachers and the improvement of student outcomes. Professional learning in mathematics and science education has the potential to address concerns about shortages in these areas and their impact on economic growth. However, attendance at face-to-face professional learning is…

Background: The Response to Intervention (RTI) approach involves the use of a dynamic model built around the systematic documentation of students' response to research-based instructional interventions. Although there has been widespread implementation of RTI models for early intervention and in some cases, as a means to identify students with…

Health system managers and policy makers need timely access to high quality, policy-relevant systematic reviews. Our objectives were to obtain managers' and policy makers' feedback about user-friendly summaries of systematic reviews and about tools related to supporting or assessing their use. Our interviews identified that participants prefer key…

This paper addresses some methodological issues concerning traditional linear approaches and shows the need for a paradigm shift in education research towards the Complexity and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems (NDS) framework. It presents a quantitative piece of research aiming to test the nonlinear dynamical hypothesis in education. It applies…

All teachers (N = 32) at one middle school participated in a university-led intervention to improve student engagement. Teachers discussed four principles of motivation and related instructional strategies. Teachers enacted instructional strategies in their classrooms. We observed six randomly selected teachers and their students over 3 years.…

Although various methods have been used to teach about poverty in the social work classroom (e.g., quantitative, historical, and qualitative), the use of geographic visualization and geographic information systems (GIS) has become a relatively new method. In our analysis of food access on the East Side of Buffalo, New York, we demonstrate the…

The purpose was to investigate common experiences of superintendents as they responded to realignment of leadership responsibilities during an organizational change initiated by mayoral control. To discover the shared essence of changes in leadership responsibilities experienced by superintendents, individuals "told their stories" to…