This brief estimates the impact of a statewide implementation of Opportunity Culture models, using North Carolina as an example. Impacts estimated include student learning outcomes, gross state product, teacher pay, and other career characteristics, and state income tax revenue. Estimates indicate the potential for a statewide transition to…

With the changing face of higher education comes a demand to include new technological tools. Universities need to build their capacity to respond to new technology-related challenges. The introduction of ePortfolios is a significant strategy in this response. A number of organizational change management models are used to analyze the…

As a result of the varied implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI) and uneven occurrence of professional development, special education teachers struggle to adapt to new roles and responsibilities. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the role of special education teachers in implementing and monitoring RTI, the role…

English teachers encourage writing that opens college students to transformative learning through soul work as John Dirkx describes and develops the concept of soul work in his theory of transformative learning. This soul work involves the conscious attempt to bring to the surface myths, images, and metaphors from the unconscious through…

In 2009, the Obama Administration created a $4.3 billion dollar grant competition for states called "Race to the Top" (RttT). The money, earmarked from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was to be distributed by the Department of Education to states who were making efforts to adhere to precirculated reforms supported by…

This research analyzes the scheme proposed to assess the quality of higher education institutions in China, namely, the Quality Assessment of Undergraduate Education (QAUE) scheme. This article aims to determine the impact of the QAUE on universities and explore the reasons that intended effects have or have not been generated in the evaluated…

This article begins by revealing what U.S. secondary school educators think about the Common Core State Standards when they were asked about it at a district professional development session in October 2012. The replies of these educators to the query include "It requires higher-order thinking," "The Common Core starts in…

The paper reports a study of the project practices of four Indian middle school teachers, elicited through semi-structured interviews of individual teachers. The teachers also responded to a proposal to modify four aspects of existing project practices, viz. subject integration, assessment, group work, and management of resources. The aspects were…

Invitational theory presents the concept of invitations as related to five factors: people, places, policies, programs, and processes (Purkey & Schmidt, 1990). In this article, the author proposes the addition of a sixth "P," politics. The assumption is that without addressing the political aspect of schools and school systems,…

This work is grounded in the literature on women in the academy and offers glimpses into four young women professors' experiences in the field of educational leadership. We utilized reflective practice and interpersonal communication to create a dialogue centered on three qualitative research questions that allows a window into our lives. We…

Preschoolers with autism face a number of challenges in integrating into different community activities owing to behavioural, communication and emotional concerns. Since the year 2009, the Hong Kong Heep Hong Society has developed a training programme for enhancing community participation among individuals with autism. The current project reports…

We explore the efficacy of one increasingly familiar strategic intervention designed to disrupt antigay school environments--Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs). Despite the increasing popularity of GSAs, there has been little research on the ways in which they do--and do not--impact school climate. The ubiquity of antigay and homophobic attitudes…

The 2004 California Mental Health Services Act requires large-scale system change in the public mental health system through a shift to recovery-oriented services for diverse populations. This article describes an innovative strategy for workforce recruitment and retention to create and sustain these systemic changes. The California Social Work…

The role of schools and physical education in promoting health, producing a "healthy nation" and in tackling obesity has been increasingly recognised in recent years. In England this is evidenced by various policies, strategies and responses from government that have highlighted schools to be instrumental in addressing health broadly and…

Strategic planning plays an important but sometimes controversial role in higher education. This paper examines how strategic planning works in Chinese universities, using Peking University as a case study. This essay discusses the rationale for why Peking University (PKU) decided to pursue status as a world-class university along with objectives…