Great teachers can actually alter the life trajectory of their students. Effective teachers can help close gaps for students who come to school far behind; they can influence whether their students attend college after high school; they can even significantly impact the future salaries of their students, years before they enter the workforce. For…

The performance-driven project management program examined in this article was funded to support a variety of technical assistance efforts designed to strengthen the performance of small and medium enterprises in the Turkish Cypriot community in Cyprus. The customized program combined progressive workshops with hands-on and distance coaching by…

At the heart of most performance management systems is a reward program. However, even when we are doing everything else right, rewards can go wrong. Here, we explore five ways that external incentives can damage performance, from destroying altruistic behavior to distracting people from the task. Fortunately, most of these downfalls are…

Science performance assessments (SPAs) are designed to elicit a wider range of scientific knowledge and abilities than ordinarily measured by more traditional paper-and-pencil tests. To engage in SPAs and thus demonstrate abilities such as scientific inquiry, students must interact with various participants and communicate in a variety of ways.…

Creativity theories have been investigated in relation to explicit or implicit theories, which have dominated the field. The flourishing attention about creativity motivated many researchers to examine implicit and explicit theories to understand creativity in their studies. Explicit theories are those formulated by psychologists or other social…

Today's trained technicians in alternative energy fields are finding even more career opportunities open to them as the United States and the world turn to green technology to power their homes and businesses. Wisconsin's Gateway Technical College is training workers for green collar careers in geoexchange heating and cooling systems, wind power…

This article describes a study conducted by Judith A. Hale and Debbie L. Page to identify the domains required for sustainable school improvement efforts. The results were used to develop a proficiency-based certification for school improvement specialists offered by the International Society for Performance Improvement. They were also used to…

Background: Newborn hearing screening, early intervention programs, and advancements in cochlear implant and hearing aid technology have greatly increased opportunities for children with hearing loss to become intelligible talkers. Optimizing speech intelligibility requires that progress be monitored closely. Although direct assessment of…

This article offers a critical examination of one regional institution's endeavor to imagine, develop, and implement a sustainable campus-wide writing-intensive program. Grounded in local and institutional contexts, our narrative elucidates how WPAs at rural and regional institutions can reconcile the processes of negotiation and concession to…

Peer educators can be a powerful addition to classroom learning environments. Traditionally, the university science teaching model relies on graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) to provide instruction in laboratory class sessions, but there is increasing evidence that undergraduate TAs (UTAs) can fill an equivalent role. A comparison of student…

Collaborative learning has become a dominant learning apparatus for higher level learning objectives. Much of the psychological and social mechanisms operating under this complex group activity, however, is not yet well understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of college students' communication competence and degree…

Without a doubt, the movement toward corporatized, standardized, and even sanitized education models in K-12 education impacts the way students at the higher education level view teaching and learning. New York City public school teachers have been trained to focus entirely on measurable outcomes. Writing is taught as a well-structured paragraph…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the completion of a peer-teaching course impacted pre-service teachers ability to perform, teach, and assess motor skills. Central Michigan University (CMU) implemented a required course for physical education teacher education majors in which enrollees were evaluated on how well they performed…

This study aimed to gain knowledge of students' beliefs and difficulties in understanding p-values, and to use this knowledge to develop improved teaching programs. This study took place over four consecutive teaching semesters of a one-semester tertiary statistics unit. The study was cyclical, in that the results of each semester were used to…

Background: In 2006, Oslin and Mitchell published a review of the game-centred approaches (GCAs) to teaching and coaching literature highlighting a number of core concepts thought to provide justification for the use of GCAs including (a) its potential to enhance participant motivation, (b) potential for tactical transfer, and (c) development of…