Looking across the papers of this special issue, Volume 48, Number 2 and Volume 49, Number 1, this commentary paper suggests that by attempting to set stages of teacher effectiveness, collectively these five papers contribute toward making a step from exploring if teachers matter for student learning to understanding how teachers could be…

Scott Hamilton is the Forrest Gump of education reform, although with a lot more IQ points and fewer chocolates. He worked for Bill Bennett in the U.S. Department of Education and for Benno Schmidt at the Edison Project. He authorized charter schools in Massachusetts, co-founded the KIPP network, quadrupled the size of Teach For America (TFA), and…

Collaborative problem-solving is often not a sequential process; instead, it can involve tasking switching or dual tasking (i.e., multitasking) activities in that the collaborators need to shift their attention between the targeted problems and the conversations they carry on with their collaborators. It is not known to what extent the…

St. HOPE (Helping Others Pursue Excellence) has embraced the character education movement and worked tirelessly to become a National School of Character. There is a commitment to relevant, student-driven service learning that develops every facet of their scholars' burgeoning identities, experiences that truly cultivate the whole child. St. HOPE…

This essay considers the relation between academic development, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and educational research. It does so with reference to questions of academic identity and disciplinary expertise, arguing that as developers we need to consider carefully the ways in which we frame how we approach attempts to foster reflective…

In this paper we explore the contributions that Deleuze and Guattari have made to thinking/writing language and how these ideas can be put to work in producing a doctoral thesis. We contribute to the field of work within what Patti Lather and Elizabeth St Pierre have called the "post-qualitative" movement, where researchers attempt to…

The need for in-service education of teachers cannot be underestimated. It is a necessity in enhancing work performance and motivation of teachers in the field. Absence of in-service training of teachers will retard professional growth of teachers as well as "missing gaps" between demands and actual achievement levels. Inservice…

The focus of the present paper is a critical discussion of the recently developed concept Pedagogy in Practice (PiP) with the intention of improving the concept for future research. PiP aims to understand ongoing educational practice from the students' perspective by interviewing groups of students about their understanding of learning. By…

This study used video feedback to improve the horseback-riding skills of advanced beginning riders. We focused on 3 skill sets: those used in jumping over obstacles, dressage riding on the flat, and jumping position riding on the flat. Baseline consisted of standard lesson procedures. Intervention consisted of video feedback in which a recorded…

The article aims at explaining the authors' proposal to develop parenting education for caregivers of an Islamic orphanage in Bandung namely Rumah Belajar (Rumbela) Muthmainnah in improving parenting skills of caregivers. The preliminary study conducted at Rumbela Muthmainnah indicated that the caregivers had limitations and practiced the…

College Measures was established in 2010 as a partnership between the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Matrix Knowledge Group (now Optimity Advisors). In 2016, College Measures became fully owned by AIR. It remains focused on using data to drive improvement in higher education outcomes in the United States. This fact sheet presents a…

Professional development (PD) is seen by a broad cross-section of stakeholders--teachers, principals, policymakers--as essential for instructional improvement and student learning. And yet, despite deep investments of time and money in its design and implementation, the return on investment and subjective assessments about PD's effectiveness…

One way to facilitate the improvement of instructional practice is to ground professional development activities in teachers' classroom contexts and experiences (Kazemi & Hubbard, 2008; Wilson & Berne, 1999). While most would consider instructional coaching one such activity, the impact of coaching on student achievement (Campbell and…

The college union, having served as a thriving community center on college campuses for more than 100 years, is a compelling venue to discuss physical space and community. The purpose of this study is to understand how highly rated unions make meaning of community, to identify common elements of college unions that are evident in campus community,…

This memorandum presents results from a scan of states' accountability and accreditation systems, focusing on measures of student achievement and outcomes that are associated with school improvement. Particular attention was given to indicators that can lead to increased student achievement and school quality other than state assessments. The data…