Profiles four elementary and secondary schools from around the country that have created successful staff development programs to address an array of diversity issues common in schools nationwide. The efforts included emphasizing assessment and nonverbal techniques; pairing teachers and students on technology-based projects; emphasizing motivation…

Reading fluency has been identified as one of the necessary components for becoming a strong reader. Instructional techniques designed to improve reading fluency are generally easy to implement. Many parents are eager to assist in the growth of their children's academic skills. This article describes a procedure for improving oral reading fluency…

This chapter describes nine of this volume's themes and offers summary recommendations stemming from those themes.

The article presents the findings of the research into professional development needs of study programme managers at four Lithuanian higher education schools (two universities and two colleges) and a revised methodology for research into study programme managers professional development needs in the didactical domain of teacher qualification…

As a profession language educators are paying more attention to teacher-driven research to help clarify and explain those phenomena occurring in our classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the following question: What happens when teachers apply a teacher action research (TAR) strategy for improving their classroom practice? I will…

This study investigated the performance of 13 graduate students' collaborative efforts toward a group research project in an Instructional Analysis, Design, and Evaluation online course. Gaps between course expectations from the instructor and student collaborative performance were identified through the review of the team agreement, the use of…

By expanding the school leadership team to include the school's counselors, the staff of a K-12 school successfully transformed many of their existing family-school routines into more collaborative efforts. We delineate the history of this change initiative, the goals and objectives for the change project, and the primary organizational change…

State and federal mandates for education reform call for increased accountability and the inclusion of students with disabilities in all accountability efforts. In the rush to implement high-stakes education reforms, particularly those involving tests or assessments, the particular needs of students with severe cognitive disabilities are only now…

This paper explores the interplay between Western conceptions of education and students from other educational traditions, most specifically Japan, through the lens of the author's practice in international education. He examines models of the private and public spheres and public discourse advanced by Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas in relation…

The design, implementation, and evaluation of the second phase in a two-year faculty development initiative by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium on Higher Education (SEPCHE) is presented. The initiative addressed instruction of SEPCHE faculty in the use of technology in college teaching. Six workshops were conducted for faculty in specific…

Like most states, Pennsylvania has a state accountability system that is aligned with the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and requires that students reach adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) in reading and mathematics at the end of grades 3, 5, 8, and 11 in…

In October 2002, Sebastian River High School in Florida developed a literacy system that includes all faculty and staff members. The literacy system identifies roles, responsibilities, and actions for everyone, including daily literacy-related nonnegotiables for all teachers. Now, students who have a history of failure are posting gains of one…

Only one out of five high school teachers believes that students are learning to write well according to research from Public Agenda. Test results confirm their opinion. In 1998, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered a writing assessment to gauge fourth- and eighth-grade students' proficiency in writing narrative,…

Representatives of business, industry, and education have long perceived a gap between students' existing skills and those needed in the workplace. To address this problem, a strong movement toward adopting voluntary skill standards is now seen within career and technical education (CTE). In this article, the author discusses how addressing skill…

Nestled in the valley between the Berkshire hills and the Taconic range, North Adams, Massachusetts, in many ways is typical of old New England mill towns working hard to create a new identity in the global economy. When Sprague Electric left town in 1985, the city of 16,000 reeled from the loss of 4,000 blue-collar jobs. This article describes…