This paper presents an overview of the Business and International Education Program of the International Education Programs Service (IEPS). This program provides funds to institutions of higher education that enter into an agreement with a trade association, a business, or both for the purpose of improving business curriculum and as a means of…

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The law had a very simple mission: kick-start an economic recovery through strategic investment. Deep within the law were a number of key education initiatives, including Race to the Top (RTT), which was a way to invest in the nation's education system…

Schools across the country are trying to build capacity to meet the diverse needs of learners. School psychologists are often expected to play a key role in capacity building and systemic change. Many students have or are at risk for having significant academic and social-emotional problems, and to date, schools have not been well equipped to…

Recent calls for teacher preparation to become more grounded in practice prompt the questions: Which practices? and perhaps more fundamentally, what counts as a model of instruction worth learning for a new professional--i.e., the beginner's repertoire? In this report, we argue the following: If a defined set of subject-specific high-leverage…

We report on a study of three school jurisdictions in the province of Alberta. The original premise for the research on which this report is based was to investigate the diverse ways that school districts had administered resources that were provided through a major initiative to improve learning in the province. This account is not centrally…

The concept of "turnaround schools" implies that decision makers can distinguish between schools that need to be turned around and those that do not need to be. Decision makers assume that schools in which students score at levels deemed proficient on multiple choice standardized tests are successful and that schools with students who do…

This paper provides a brief overview of the status of retention and completion efforts among community colleges in the United States. This article identifies a number of successful strategies utilized in on-ground institutions that may translate well to online programs. In light of these successes, the article questions whether the costly current…

In this paper a comparison is made between the structure and operations of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and the Ako Aotearoa National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence of New Zealand. Both of these organisations were established in the mid 2000s and were created at a time when higher education institutions in both countries…

Teaching is a complex activity that requires making ongoing multiple decisions and sporadic, responsive actions all while performing preplanned prescribed tasks. Evidence of certain aspects of teaching can be best assessed with a well-designed observation instrument. This instrument was designed to assess the enactment of the essential elements of…

This study used portable technology based on Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM log) to register workday practices of school principals and heads from Chilean schools who were implementing school improvement plans aimed at developing a culture of organizational learning. For a week, Smartphone devices which beeped seven times a day were given to…

This study compared an individual, 4-hr intervention based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) versus a no-contact control condition in improving the performance of international-level chess players. Five participants received the brief ACT protocol, with each matched to another chess player with similar characteristics in the control…

To be successful in the age of accountability, principals and all school leaders need to continue to build their capacity to lead meaningful, systemic and sustainable student improvement efforts that incorporate the required areas of reading and mathematics. A review of the educational literature revealed several studies that identified the…

Every day students and instructors are faced with the decision of when to study information. The timing of study, and how it affects memory retention, has been explored for many years in research on human learning. This research has shown that performance on final tests of learning is improved if multiple study sessions are separated--i.e.,…

At the first Portfolio School District Network meeting, in 2009, 15 people sat around a table wondering whether the portfolio idea could work only in special circumstances like New York City or New Orleans. Three years later, 27 districts are implementing this continuous improvement strategy and more are eager to learn how they can make it work…

"Mirrors of the Mind" uses East Asian epistemology and cultural concepts as new conceptual tools to address fundamental questions that educators encounter. The book invites readers to critically reflect on commonly held assumptions about learning, cognition, motivation, development, and other essential areas of educational psychology and learning…