The sheer volume of information available today is becoming overwhelming. Yet more information doesn't necessarily makes one smarter. The result is that people are attracted to what is flashy and instantly stimulating, and less and less inclined to pay attention to what is important. Educators are also experiencing the same distracting information…

Headlines offer a plethora of opinions and arguments both for and against proposed and newly implemented teacher evaluation systems all over the United States. Hardly anyone balks at the idea of evaluating teachers, but many question whether these new evaluation systems really improve teaching and learning. The author's experience with the new…

The leadership practice of superintendents spans three domains: instructional, managerial, and political (Johnson, 1996; Cuban, 1998; Nestor-Baker and Hoy, 2001; Lashaway, 2002). Despite the fact that superintendents lead organizations whose main business is teaching and learning, they spend most of their time in the political and managerial…

Within the dynamic globalized operating environment, organizations are increasingly relying on virtual teams to solve their most difficult problems, leverage their expertise and expand their presence. The use of virtual teams by organizations continues to increase greatly as the technologies supporting them evolve. Despite improvements in…

This dialogue is an edited version of a dialogue between William C. Ayers and William H. Schubert at the November 10-12, 2011, meeting of the Progressive Education Network hosted by the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, Illinois. It was the opening keynote session on the evening of November 10. Ayers interviewed Schubert, who acted as John…

The lesson study approach is a systematic process for producing professional knowledge about teaching by teachers, and has spread rapidly and extensively in the United States. The learning study approach is essentially a kind of lesson study with an explicit learning theory--the variation theory of learning. In this paper, we argue that having an…

Working on teaching as a collective practice--understanding it, specifying it, and improving it--is crucially important and too often ignored. But setting up a choice between improving teaching and improving teachers is problematic for several reasons. To begin with, it seems that the very methods Hiebert and Morris outline for improving teaching…

Some organizations have begun to target their goal-setting method more closely to the ability levels of their employees. In this article, we report the results of a laboratory study of 138 undergraduate students, which shows that these "ability-based" goals are more effective at improving performance than a "one goal for all"…

In this essay Clinton Golding introduces a new construct and area of research--epistemic progress--and argues that it can shed new light on educational inquiry. By clearly distinguishing progress through developing better ideas (epistemic progress) from progress through developing better inquiry skills (procedural progress), teachers and students…

The crisis in Europe constitutes a major test for the very pursuit of European integration and for its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. In this paper a number of striking economic aspects of the crisis will be discussed next to political tensions concerning sensitive issues. Given the decline in the support for the European integration…

Teachers are being asked to educate a variety of students, including a growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds (Diaz-Rico, 2012. "A course for teaching English learners." Upper Saddle River, NY: Pearson). Because students from diverse backgrounds are the fastest growing population in…

This study was conducted to develop a simple and inexpensive experimental apparatus that can measure the position of an object moving along a straight line at certain time intervals. For the construction of the apparatus, a battery-powered toy car, a fine-tipped paint brush, gouache (or watercolour) paint and paper tape were used. The working…

In response to current accountability, program evaluation, and accreditation pressures, educator preparation programs are implementing electronic assessment systems (EAS). The EAS provides a means of systematic, reliable, and valid procedures for the purpose of collecting and summarizing teacher candidate performance and program data. The purpose…

This article reports on a plea directed to schools in England that changed status to an "academy" and thus lost their Local Authority Radiation Protection Adviser (RPA) service. These schools have been encouraged to do all that they can to hang on to their sources (radioactive equipment used in classroom experiments to investigate…

Assessment is primarily a matter of judgement rather than measurement, yet for too long the nation has been pretending that pupils' attainment and measurement can be measured in increasingly fine detail (one APS "point" being one sixth of an original National Curriculum level). The lack of validity and reliability of this approach…