If Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wins the November election, his ascension could endanger--or dismantle--key Obama administration education initiatives and lead to a slimmed-down and less activist U.S. Department of Education. Scaled back Education Department and cloudy prospects for Obama initiatives are among the scenarios. But…

These are exciting times in American education. While higher education has been preoccupied with its own challenges, its colleagues in K-12 have been adopting new standards, building new assessments and curricula, and redefining success for America's schools. For decades, the end-goal and primary success measure of most school systems was high…

Educational technology plays an important role in distance education system. By adapting new communication educational technologies in distance educational programmes their quality could be ensured. Instructions conducted through the use of technologies which significantly or completely eliminate the traditional face to face communication between…

Disciplines and professions each have their own methods of inquiry. This article outlines the commonalities as well as the differences and describes the relationship between the disciplines and the professions. The emphasis is on consulting because this is the profession with which we are concerned. There are three different approaches in…

Both districts and individual schools have a very clear set of goals and skills for their students to achieve and master. In fact, except in rare cases, districts and schools develop very detailed goals they wish to pursue. In most cases, unfortunately, only the teachers and staff at a particular school or district-level office are aware of the…

I am a doctoral student enrolled in an educational research program. While completing an action research course, I conducted research to improve my academic writing and to develop skills for formulating arguments about educational issues. From this research I developed an appreciation for and an understanding of good writing habits and elements of…

In this study, a blended synchronous learning environment (BSLE) was created to support a group of graduate students when they were taking a course. Instruction was delivered to both face-to-face (F2F) and online students simultaneously. The purpose of this paper is to present how this BSLE was gradually designed, implemented, and improved by…

This paper reports the findings of an action research that was conducted over the course of two years. The research investigated the role of using reading diaries and strategy instruction with English Language Teaching trainees to foster greater learner autonomy and looked into the language learning strategies used by these students. The findings…

This article presents a study of EssayCritic, a computer-based writing aid for English as a foreign language (EFL) that provides feedback on the content of English essays. We compared two feedback conditions: automated feedback from EssayCritic (target class) and feedback from collaborating peers (comparison class). We used a mixed methods…

This study focused on science and math professional learning communities (PLCs) that were implemented through a university-urban high school partnership. These PLCs were part of mandated school-wide, content-based PLCs implemented as part of the reform efforts initiated in an urban school to address the school's failure to meet Adequate Yearly…

Purpose: Increased school autonomy and accountability have been a common denominator of national reforms in otherwise heterogeneous governance systems in Europe and the USA. The paper argues that because schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDCs) often have lower average performance, they are more often sanctioned or under closer scrutiny,…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the processes and features of one P-16 partnership developed to improve the clinical experience of teacher preparation. The development of partnerships reflects a commitment among institutions to collaborate in a purposeful manner with a keen awareness that each partner must seek to better understand and…

In 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, a metropolitan school system in the southern United States embarked on a unique mission to improve the quality of its public prekindergarten programs through a partnership with a group of developmental researchers in an iterative, data-based venture. Data on 407 children in Year 1 and 433 in Year 2 (who were enrolled in…

Despite many positive developments in South Africa (SA), the education system and educational outcome face many challenges and require further improvement. This is reflected by elevated school dropout rates and suboptimal annual pass rates in various grades (Grades 7-12). Over the years, a plethora of studies has identified methods through which…

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…