In education, practitioners are increasingly looking for strategies to bring data and evidence into decisionmaking and to roll out programs in intentional ways that allow for ongoing improvement. This toolkit acts as a guide to improvement strategies for teams of practitioners at colleges, providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to…

The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (CFTL) at WestEd led the Teacher Practice Networks (TPN) initiative for five years, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Initial rounds of Gates funding supported 21 education improvement organizations in disseminating standards-based resources around the nation. Later rounds…

In recent years, we have reached a homeostasis in education policy, characterized by clearer and fairer but lighter-touch accountability systems and the incremental growth of school choice options for families--but little appetite for big and bold new initiatives. To be sure, there are still fights--battles in state legislatures between reform…

Achieve high performance for all in your school. In "Achieving Equity and Excellence," author Douglas Reeves outlines how to make dramatic improvements to student learning, behavior, and attendance in a single semester. Study the mindset of high-poverty, high-success schools and follow their example to implement the equitable and just…

"Visible Learning Insights" presents a fascinating 'inside view' of the ground-breaking research of John Hattie. Together, the authors John Hattie and Klaus Zierer embark on a mission to build on the internationally renowned work and combine the power and authority of the research with the real 'coal face' experience of schools. Offering…

This dissertation is a case study of State Public University (pseudonym), a large, public university in the United States, and the promising practice that improved student learning by redesigning an Information Technology course (pseudonym IT-101). The stakeholders were faculty who were involved in the redesign. As part of this qualitative study,…

Global access to preschool has increased dramatically yet preschool quality is often poor. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate two approaches to improving the quality of Colombian preschools. We find that the first, which was rolled out nationwide and provides additional resources for materials and new staff, did not benefit…

The model in which the interactions of administrators, teachers, and other school personnel contribute to school improvement is identified as distributed leadership in the literature. Distributed leadership can lead to transformational change within the school that indirectly leads to instructional improvements in academic capacity. Additionally,…

This is the technical appendices to "Destination Integration: Perspectives of Students and Advisors about Improving Academic Advising. Part 2 of a Series on Academic Advising from the CSU Student Success Network." This research explores advising practices on five CSU campuses, expands on the previous report by bringing in the voices of…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the solutions that faculty members resort to by trial and error in certain challenges presented to them in undergraduate seminars for second, third, and fourth year students. The research questions used were as follows: (1) what kind of problems do faculty members face; and (2) how faculty members try to…

The way in which mid-semester course evaluations are structured, administered and reported is important for generating rich and high-quality student feedback for the enhancement of learning and teaching. Mid-semester evaluations usually contain open-ended questions that trigger more elaborative feedback about what is going on in a class than that…

Professional development is a critical part of school improvement and enhancing teacher quality; yet there is limited literature about how principals design and lead effective professional development systems. The research activities in this qualitative single case study explored the leadership practices at one successful school implementing…

One of the primary functions of local school districts is to provide a sound educational environment to students. To achieve this goal, school districts continue to maintain and improve existing facilities and construct new buildings. School districts must go through bond elections to receive voter approval before issuing bonds to support the…

Facilities are a critical component of an agricultural education program. Yet, there has been limited research done on agricultural educators' perceptions of facilities, especially since the facilities and resources of every agricultural education program can be highly variable. The purpose of this study was to understand the participants'…

This paper investigates an institutional transformation at a European research university, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) by adopting a qualitative case study method. Open-ended interviews were held with 45 faculty members and administrators to investigate the driving forces and overall transformation of EPFL as well as their…