In recent years the field of literacy education and research has seen an increased attention to disciplinary literacy instruction--the teaching of discipline-specific and valued ways of reading, writing, knowing, and communicating knowledge. This article is about disciplinary literacy, specifically disciplinary reading as it is understood by…

Electronic communications technologies (ECTs) help college students and parents remain in contact. Because recent reports have emphasized a link between ECTs, helicopter parenting, and autonomy issues, this study focused on the significance of contact patterns for attachment and student adjustment. First-semester college students (199 female, 81…

Teachers need tools and assessments that will prepare students to meet the ambitious goals laid out by the Common Core State Standards. The multiple-choice tests that dominate in history will not prepare students to analyze primary and secondary sources, cite textual evidence to support arguments, consider the influence of an author's perspective,…

This work explores some methodological challenges in the application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to the study of "Asynchronous Learning Networks" (ALN). Our interest in the SNA is situated within the framework of the study of Distributed Teaching Presence (DTP), understood as the exercise of educational influence, through a multi-method…

Schools continue to change in many ways. Technology, diversity, Response to Intervention (RtI), 21st Century Skills, and other initiatives warrant the need for continued professional development for all school staff. School psychologists play a key role in the school system and can bring significant contributions to the school team. School…

Public K-12 schools in the United States currently face competing demands that place improved student learning as the main goal to ensure students develop 21st century skills. However, internal and external factors may work with or against each other within a school's efforts to achieve this. The problem that serves as the basis for this…

In 1985 the state of Georgia introduced the Quality Core Curriculum (QCC) in accordance with the Quality Basic Education (QBE) Act. These learning standards identified the content knowledge that students were required to learn in each subject area at all grade levels. The QCC was replaced by the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) to identify the…

In Japan, only a few public libraries provide e-mail reference services. To help public libraries start e-mail reference services, the authors investigated reference questions received by libraries via e-mail and traditional face-to-face services. The authors found that research questions are more frequently observed among e-mail questions and…

This study was designed to identify and investigate nursing faculty and student perspectives of self-directed learning in a practical nursing program. It also explored the degree to which student's perceptions of self-directed learning exhibited factors consistent with that of critical thinking. This study is important because self-directed…

Concerns about the value and quality of higher education have led to increased scrutiny of the U.S. system of peer accreditation. Public policy-makers have begun to question the extent to which accrediting agencies achieve their quality assurance and quality improvement objectives in the colleges and universities they accredit. Some have begun to…

The two studies in this dissertation identify and address two related research gaps in literature on healthcare virtual support communities. Study one suggested that the exclusive emphasis on social support behavior and its impacts on individual well-being in virtual support communities has led to the neglect of another type of social interaction…

Policy makers and educators across the nation are incorporating new standards and assessments into evaluation systems, designed to impact teacher effectiveness and student achievement. New York is one of the states that have developed a teacher evaluation system, now fully implemented in all of its 697 public school districts. As the results from…

Purpose of the Study: Lay health educators (LHEs) offer great promise for facilitating the translation of evidence-based health promotion programs to underserved areas; yet, there is little guidance on how to train LHEs to implement these programs, particularly in the crucial area of empirically validated obesity interventions. Design and Methods:…

This paper reports on a fragment from an educational action research in a teacher education setting, ascertaining the possibilities of using the online environment of google.doc for initiating pre-service teachers' discourse about the nature of inclusive relationships between individuals and the environment, and the ways of their enhancement. The…

The purpose of this study was to examine Turkish prospective primary teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and readiness for their future roles and responsibilities as inclusive classroom teachers. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how these roles and responsibilities relate to future teaching practices. In addition, this study examined…