This article presents an interview with Wes Taylor, the 2011 MetLife/NASSP National High School Principal of the Year. In this interview, Taylor shares credit with the teachers and staff members at Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia, for the school's systemic and long-lasting improvement in instruction and climate. He mentions that the…

It can be quite alarming (and eye-opening) to see exactly how many of the grades students receive are based on their behaviors rather than their learning. Students should be assessed on what they know and can use rather than on their behavior. The reality, unfortunately, is that the opposite is often the case. Grades for students who work hard are…

Effective leadership begins with the individual. Until a person is self-actualized, external relationships and communications are often unpredictable and potentially flawed. The paradox is that young people need exposure to situations that require them to lead, in order to develop individual skills that will enable them to be successful group and…

Leader succession is often the result of a broken system, resulting in the loss of leadership gains from the exiting leader and leaving the incoming leader without proper support for success. This system needs replacing, with a system of dynamic succession planning that is carefully planned and an integral part of a school's improvement plan. To…

This short paper points to some paradigm issues in the field of school development (leadership, effectiveness, improvement) and their relationship to social justice. It contextualises the dominant School Effectiveness and School Improvement models within neo-liberal marketisation, paying attention to their transformation through a "marriage of…

It is not clear how best to support youth with type 1 diabetes to participate in physical education (PE) at school. The aim of this study was to explore perceptions of facilitators and barriers to PE in youth with type 1 diabetes and to determine how schools can help these individuals to be physically active. Interviews and focus groups were…

Bridge21 is an innovative approach to learning for secondary education that was originally conceptualised as part of a social outreach intervention in the authors' third-level institution whereby participants attended workshops at a dedicated learning space on campus focusing on a particular model of technology-mediated group-based learning. This…

Several factors contribute to a disproportionately lower Latino participation in college education. Foremost among those factors are policies that encourage quick job placement over career development, lack of understanding of the benefits of a college degree, lower expectations for Latino students, poor financial planning, and lack of guidance. A…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the formative evaluation results from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Healthy School Communities (HSC) pilot project. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilized 11 HSC pilot sites in the USA (eight sites) and Canada (three sites). The evaluation question was…

This study explored the challenges facing 1st-year alternatively certified teachers of mathematics and science in urban middle schools. Four teachers, participants in a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, were followed from preservice training through their 1st year of teaching, having taken part in…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

This mixed-methods study examined four STEM communities (BioQUEST, Project Kaleidoscope, the POGIL Project, and SENCER) in order to better understand the roles of these communities in advancing the goals of scaling STEM education reform. The project explored three key questions: (1) How do members and leaders of communities of practice (CoPs1)…

The American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) was founded in 1982 as the result of a merger between the National Association for Public and Continuing Adult Education (NAPCAE) and the Adult Education Association (AEA). This prestigious association is dedicated to the belief that lifelong learning contributes to human…

Informatization, as a trend in the world's development nowadays, has become an important force to promote economic and social reforms. Since 1990s, information technology reforms have advanced dramatically. Along with the constant development of the information industry as well as the popularization of information network, informatization has been…

After following career interests that included anthropology and the visual arts, the author realized that working with adult immigrants with limited formal education and literacy skills was her path and her passion. Since few programs in the TESOL field focused on these learners, the author sought out instruction in nontraditional spaces to…