The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, to which $3 billion were allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), supports schools attempting to turn around a history of low performance. School turnaround also is a focus of Race to the Top (RTT), another ARRA-supported initiative, which involved a roughly $4…

This qualitative study is written from a phenomenological standpoint using Van Manen's (1990 ) hermeneutic lived experiences of the participants. Fourth grade teachers from a large urban school district in the southwestern U.S. completed an online questionnaire and participated in a focus group interview to provide insight into their attitudes and…

Paraprofessionals are widely employed in response to intervention (RTI) settings to provide instruction to students at-risk for reading disabilities. However, little research has addressed effective and efficient ways to train these paraprofessionals to deliver instruction with high fidelity. In addition, given the limited time and finances…

In order to characterize the trend and exploit the opportunity provided by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the paper argues that a new schooling approach that would not only incorporate learner-centric st learning curricula and personalized learning service, but also meet the need of nurturing the 21st century skills is…

The field of teacher research is increasingly including self-study as a valid and reliable method with which teachers can study and improve practice. In this self-study, I develop knowledge of myself as a nonfiction reader and use it to inform my instruction. Guided by the work of Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, and Hurwitz (1999), I use…

Graduate students education is falling short of what the twenty-first century demands from its next generation of leaders; indeed, many educational leaders and scholars have called for graduate education to include richer, more relevant experiences (Stanton & Wagner, 2006; Stewart, 2010; Walker, Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008). At the…

The primary aim of this study was to determine perceptions of three cohorts of third year undergraduate students (n = 65) on in-class reflective group discussion as a critical reflective approach for evolving professionals. Reflective group discussions were embedded into a final year course within the University of Queensland Bachelor of Oral…

For decades, the Finnish orientation toward teacher education (TE) has committed itself to the development of an inquiry oriented and research-based professional culture. The aims of teacher education are to train students to find and analyse problems they may expect to face in their future work. This study consists of a survey of student teachers…

This study examines the action research topics and topic preferences of two groups of grassroots teachers: active researchers, and potential researchers. The analysis of the topics appears to indicate that, over the past decade, action research at the teaching of English at the grassroots level to speakers of other languages has been principally…

This article aims to review the historical development of continuing professional development programmes (CPDPs) for teachers, as well as the policies and objectives of such programmes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from the inception of these programmes until now. Styles of CPDPs that the Education Training Centres (ETCs) offer are…

Ohio adopted the Common Core standards in English language arts (ELA) and math last year, but now stands at a crossroad in making sure statewide assessments are aligned to those standards. Ohio is a participating member in two federally funded assessment consortia--the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for the…

Although there is a considerable amount of research studies about effective professional development, a literature review revealed that educators are not receiving effective professional development in order to improve instruction. What is paramount in the studies of professional development is that the traditional one-shot model does not meet the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate participating teachers' (PTs) perceptions on the effectiveness of collaborating with a peer for purposes of professional development. As the primary researcher, I wanted to investigate how my colleagues (PTs) perceived peer-to-peer collaboration as a method of professional development. As well, I wanted…

No Child Left Behind legislation developed goals for every student to be proficient in each academic subject by 2014. California's students are far from meeting this goal, especially in mathematics. One Southern Californian school district, renamed Green Valley Unified School District for anonymity, began using Cognitively Guided Instruction…

In schools across America, teachers know who among their peers is doing the best work and who is not. Yet the nation's evaluation systems tend to foster the notion that all teachers perform the same way, with the same results for students. Indeed, in an attempt at equality--uniform treatment for everyone--current evaluation systems often end up…