This study aims to provide information for researchers and policy-makers targeting at improving foreign (English) language education in their countries by showing the differences between the foreign language curricula of Turkey and Finland. Finnish National Core Curricula, along with the new curricula launched by the Finnish National Board of…

The Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program has been preparing students who are first generation. college-going students from subgroups traditionally underrepresented in higher education, and students from lower socioeconomic families for college and careers since 1980. The present study investigated the success of middle school…

Lesson Study is a popular approach to teacher professional development used widely in Japan. It involves a small group of teachers co-planning a series of lessons based on a shared learning goal for the pupils, with one teacher leading the co-constructed lesson and their colleagues invited to observe pupil learning in the lesson. The team then…

The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos…

During the 2015-16 academic year, Georgia's Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) piloted three professional development models for Georgia's Pre-K teachers. All three models focused on the Instructional Support domain of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) and used resources developed by…

In the spring of 2015, many states began administering new state assessments designed to measure students' mastery of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts (ELA). This was the first wide-scale assessment of student mastery of the Common Core. For some states, it was also the first time that state math and…

This paper describes validity of quality improvement system (QIS) performance measures and longitudinal change over four years in Oklahoma 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) programs. In general, our findings indicate that the Oklahoma Afterschool Improvement Process is performing in accordance with its purposes: using accurate…

For a long time, Advanced Placement and other advanced-level U.S. history courses at the high school level were modeled after the collegiate survey course. However, the last two decades or more have seen some significant changes in the teaching of U.S. history at undergraduate and high school levels. Many of these changes at the high school level…

The Yakutia Republic is currently working to update its early childhood development (ECD) system. Its goal is to ensure a high quality environment for early learning and child care and to enable higher enrolment levels. Currently, a high priority for the Government of Yakutia is to increase access to pre-school education, given the significant…

This article recounts three studies that portray an evolution from research examining the effects of researcher-designed instructional interventions to research examining the impact of helping teachers to design their own instructional interventions. Study 1 investigated the effects of an instructional treatment designed by the research team on…

This study investigated the effect of online summative and formative assessments on 30 Iranian English as foreign language teachers' teaching competences. Everything being equal in terms of participant homogeneity and classroom video-based teacher induction for 21 sessions, significant differences in teaching competence improvements on three…

This paper explores the issue of metalanguage and writing instruction in the senior secondary curriculum. It reports on the use of a design based research collaboration between a very experienced teacher of Ancient History and a research team with the aim of improving literacy outcomes for a group of disadvantaged students. The case highlights…

During recent years, we have seen an increase in the complexity of school leadership as knowledge work. The new forms of knowledge available to school leadership, such as performance data and survey-based data, raise the expectation that leaders make relevant use of these knowledge resources. Theory and policy claim that new knowledge is of…

Educational choice programs--defined broadly as programs that provide parents with financial aid to help their children opt out of the traditional public school system--are a hallmark of meaningful educational reform. Yet despite widespread news coverage of such programs, polls show most Americans are unfamiliar with how educational choice…

This paper sets out to explore science teachers' classroom assessment practices and outlines some of the tensions and synergies in changing assessment practices. It describes episodes from a collaborative action research project with science teachers designed to support the strengthening of classroom assessment practices--the King's Researching…