Due to the increasing mental health needs of children, schools have been tasked with supporting academic and social emotional needs of students. One component of mental health and wellness that is growing in popularity in the school environment is social emotional learning, or SEL. This qualitative multiple case study explored factors influential…

This article presents a case study of a remote bridge program for adults who have disabilities that shows how responsive virtual instructional design can expand access to learning and build confidence in populations that face barriers to success in education and training. It focuses on how to reframe instructional practices through technology and…

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 impacted not only how students in our public and private schools were taught, but also how the professors prepared preservice teachers to become future teachers. Striving to build a community of practice among a new cohort of M.A.Ed-Elementary Education preservice teachers, faculty worked…

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) has a codified responsibility to develop the Commonwealth's state-level strategic plan for higher education and to review The Plan every six years to ensure its relevance in addressing critical issues. In 2019, to fulfill a Code requirement and more important, to identify the main near-…

Practical training is important for community college students to gain high-impact real-world experience. This study aims to evaluate the impact of practical training of remote internships of community college and two-year associate degree students on spatiotemporal GIS learning during the pandemic. Anonymous pre- and post-internship surveys and…

The VTBound program was implemented at Virginia Tech to ensure international student enrollment despite travel and visa restrictions during the pandemic. The program was a partnership across academic affairs, student affairs, and admissions. Eighty-two first-year undergraduate international students from 19 countries participated in a full-time…

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged educational developers, like instructors across the world, to pivot their traditionally face-to-face faculty development programs to online formats. At the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University (classified as research-intensive and the largest public institution in Virginia, U.S.), we…

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused many adaptations to preservice teacher preparation, especially supporting completion of field-based internship experiences. This mixed methods research project utilized surveys to analyze the impact of virtual settings on (1) intern (n=14) and mentor teacher (n=5) experiences and relationships; and (2) the…

In light of COVID-19, school divisions across the country closed their doors and shifted to remote instruction. In Virginia, little guidance was provided to assist educators and teacher educators with making this transition, particularly for students with individualized education programs (IEPs). In May of 2020, researchers surveyed Virginia…

In mid-March 2020, the spread of COVID-19 prompted colleges and universities to pivot to online instruction, resulting in myriad unanticipated challenges. As teacher educators working in distinct capacities across the Elementary and Secondary Education programs at George Mason University, we gathered to make sense of this shift and have engaged in…

Both Stefanie and Autumn have taught online classes in the past but are seeking ways to improve their online pedagogy and incorporate new technologies. Stefanie and Autumn have reflected a lot about their approaches to online teaching and ideas for revising their courses, but they felt that they could get deeper insights about online teaching…

COVID-19 shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education. We examine teachers' experiences during emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of 7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9 states. Teachers reported a range of challenges related to…

COVID-19 shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education. We examine teachers' experiences during emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of 7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9 states. Teachers reported a range of challenges related to…

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education and requiring large scale school transformation on a pace never before seen. Though prior research on organizational change has emphasized the importance of working conditions for teacher satisfaction and student achievement…

After eighteen months of school closure and disrupted learning, civic leaders, researchers, and educational leaders are getting a clearer picture of how students fared through the pandemic, and what new reality school systems face as they return to in-person schooling in 2021-22. Increases in community infection rates and parent hesitancy have…