This conceptual article focuses on how a National Professional Development grant through the Office of English Language Acquisition in the U.S. Department of Education supported multilingual paraprofessionals' equitable access to and participation in high-quality, ongoing professional development aimed at supporting young multilingual learners,…

This chapter describes the opportunities for building socially justice centered training and development opportunities for all levels of staff.

Cyberbullying is a problem that affects students and schools. As more children and adolescents have contact with devices, the likelihood of cyberbullying has become more prevalent. Cyberbullying affects the learning of children within class, as the students become self-conscious or distracted. Schools should have clear directives for taking…

Challenges to developing staff quality include limited staff hours and lack of funding for training. However, even organizations that have enough time and money still may not develop their people effectively. Traditionally, organizations send staff to trainings without offering follow-up support to enable them to apply the learning (Hirsh, 2009;…

One challenge facing faculty and staff at higher education institutions, and particularly those with an access mission, is understanding and supporting their students in a holistic manner. Organizations with a high proportion of traditionally at-risk students must balance resource demands with providing the intensive teaching and advising models…

The Lawrence Hall of Science implemented a two-phase project, Building Understanding in Language Diverse Students, to modify school group workshops and drop-in public programs to better support linguistically diverse students and visitors. As we applied language support strategies developed for the school group workshops to additional areas of the…

This article is the second in a series of three articles about microaggressions. All of the articles are tailored specifically to help enable faculty developers, provosts and directors of diversity and training, faculty, and administrators to address the most critical issues related to this topic in higher education. Specific responses to and…

There are concerns about the quantity and quality of personnel in early childhood intervention (ECI) as the numbers of infants and young children with delays and disabilities grow in number, needs, and diversity. The Early Childhood Personnel Center (ECPC) was funded to provide technical assistance (TA) to state systems of ECI and institutions of…

In the age of ubiquitous and constantly evolving technologies, decisions about what to buy, when and how to deploy digital innovations work best when community colleges use systematic, team approaches. In this article, digital education leaders of Walters State Community College (Morristown, Tennessee), Kirkwood Community College (Cedar Rapids,…

Early intervention service providers are expected to form cohesive teams to build the capacity of a family to promote their child's development. Given the differences in personnel preparation across disciplines of service providers, the Early Childhood Personnel Center is creating integrated and comprehensive professional development models for…

This article is the final installment in a series of three articles about microaggressions. All of the articles are tailored specifically to help enable faculty developers, provosts and directors of diversity and training, faculty, and administrators to address the most critical issues related to this topic in higher education. Specific responses…

This article is a tribute to the writings of Dr. Roland Barth through a personal story spanning over two decades. It explores Dr. Barth's personal vision of an effective school through recent brain-based principles. It revisits Barth's axioms and uses recent implications from the neurosciences as new supporting evidence for their success in…

This article discusses an audience-informed professional development model that combines audience research focus groups and staff training that includes interaction and direct feedback from visitors, in this case, visitors with low vision. There are two critical components to this model: one is that museums' programming decisions are informed by…

Private tuition-dependent universities in Central Asia compete for fee-paying students not only within the country and the region, but also internationally--in the CIS, East Asia, Europe, and the United States. In the universities where state financial support is limited or unavailable, steady student enrollment is the key to budget, development,…

Professional development is vital to the success of afterschool programs. Effective professional development enhances afterschool program quality by facilitating staff performance and knowledge; in addition, professional development is vital for improving student learning outcomes (Bouffard & Little, 2004; Hall & Surr, 2005; Joyce &…