Many high school classrooms in the United States have physics teachers who are teaching the subject outside their certified content areas because of a severe shortage of physics teachers. There is a critical need to improve the knowledge base of these out-of-field teachers. This comparative case study examined the instructional practice of…

NGSS Early Implementers is a six-year initiative created to help eight California school districts and two charter management organizations, supported by WestEd's K-12 Alliance, implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Administrators need learning opportunities if they are to adequately understand the substantial shifts of the Next…

The Quality Elementary Science Teaching (QuEST) program is designed to deliver high-quality professional development (PD) in science content to elementary school teachers. QuEST includes both content and pedagogical instruction combined with a controlled teaching experience situated within a larger professional development context. The design of…

This article explores a two-year professional development initiative with four state geographic alliances. Professional development planners, whether planning for a large- or small-scale initiative or one with unlimited or limited funding, will benefit from learning about this successful professional development activity and how the impact in the…

This article reports on the development and results of a recent survey of academic librarians about their attitudes, involvement, and perceived capabilities using and engaging in primary research. The purpose of the survey was to inform the development of a continuing education program in research design. It updates earlier studies of academic…

The decade since publication of "Place as Text: Approaches to Active Learning" has seen an explosion of interest and productivity in the field of experiential education. This monograph presents a story of an experiment and a blueprint of sorts for anyone interested in enriching an existing program or willing to experiment with pedagogy…

The Interdisciplinary Teamed Instruction (ITI) Project was a 2-year project aimed at determining the effects of ITI on teaching and learning and at validating the effectiveness of a professional development model to facilitate development, implementation, and evaluation of ITI. Through summer institutes and onsite workshops, project staff provided…

An evaluation was conducted of a summer institute on assessment in adult literacy held at the University of Pittsburgh. The summer institute was designed to enable program administrators and instructors to hear experts in the field of adult assessment discuss, in depth, the issues that are common to all adult literacy providers. Participants had…

The California Mathematics Project was established in 1982 by the California State Legislature as one of several statewide responses to a widespread perception among educators and the public at large that the mathematical competence of American children has deteriorated. This report describes an attempt to evaluate the first year's work of one…

A critical challenge facing educators today is meeting the needs of culturally diverse school populations. Since 1989, Mississippi State University has provided a summer institute, Strategies for Instructing Culturally Diverse Students, in which selected Mississippi elementary and secondary teachers have identified strategies for addressing the…

In winter and spring 1995, the Western Center for Community College Development, in Oregon, undertook a 2-year project to develop the Contextual Learning Institute and Consortium to train teachers in contextual teaching, or instruction linked to the real life domains of students, and implement this methodology in a variety of subjects at the high…

The Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) at the University of Hawaii is described, and recommendations are made for teacher training and test development for future programs. A total of 165 students participated in 3 different levels (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) of 11 different languages, including Burmese, Cebuano, Hmong,…