Over the last decades, teachers have often been identified as 'key' players for the improvement of education systems. The successive waves of reform taking place in Latin America since the 1990s have aimed at initial and continuous teacher training. The main changes intended to improve the quality and lengthen the duration of initial teacher…

In light of the enormous changes unfolding in the higher education landscape, we don't have to look too far to recognize evidence of the transformation and redefinition of the construct of both teaching and learning in the information age. With a growing focus on teaching and learning at all levels of post-secondary institutions, innovation is…

Written expression is a key component of the secondary curriculum, but many students struggle to produce effective written expression passages. However, written expression can be supported through prewriting strategies such as concept mapping. Using a counterbalanced group design, 19 secondary students alternated between using paper- or…

Graduate programs in counselor education have historically offered the on campus multicultural course to increase students' diversity knowledge, skills, and cultural self-awareness in order to satisfy state, national and international accreditation mandates. This article analyzes the self-reported perceptions and experiences of 21 master's level…

The Open University (OU) has an established infrastructure for supporting disabled students. Historically, the thrust of this has focused on providing accessible adjustments post-production. In 2012, the OU implemented securing greater accessibility (SeGA) to raise awareness and bring about an institutional change to curriculum design so that the…

This article presents three lessons from research by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) on strategies community colleges can use to improve completion rates while maintaining broad access and keeping costs low for students and taxpayers. I also identify two sets of data pointing to the potential returns to students and society that could…

Summer research experiences are an increasingly popular means of increasing awareness of, and developing interest in, the geosciences and other science, technology, engineering, and math programs. We describe and report the preliminary results of a 1-wk Geosciences Exploration Summer Program in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M…

The article reports on a small-scale short story writing project. It details the development of the project and shares the emerging findings. The aim of the project was to enhance the quality of students' writing while developing teachers' practice in the teaching of short story writing. The project team comprised the author and four secondary…

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) Academies receive their funding directly from the government, rather than through local authorities like other state funded schools; (2) There are two types: converter academies (those previously with "good" or "outstanding" Ofsted grades that have converted to…

Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational…

This memorandum presents results from the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation's (CSAI) scan of growth models proposed in Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waivers, with a focus on U.S. states' and territories' differentiation of students who participate in special education programs.

Across the education field, there is unusual consensus that strong teacher leaders are key to improving our nation's schools. Unfortunately, clear expectations for what teacher leaders should do, and strategies to prepare them to do it, are few and far between. A recent survey found that while 86 percent of urban school districts have teacher…

It seems that everyone is talking about improving education. Indeed, over the past decade, governments have invested more in education in an effort to improve the quality of primary and secondary schools. Has this investment paid off? In every PISA cycle since 2000, students and school principals were asked a series of questions relating to their…

States are uniquely positioned to provide feedback to teacher preparation programs (TPPs) on the effectiveness of the teachers they train, and to provide information about the quality of TPPs to the public. States have been building the significant data capacity to reliably and securely link teachers with their students' achievement and growth…

The Leading Educators Fellowship program selects promising mid-career teachers through a competitive application process and develops their skills as leaders of school improvement efforts. The specific objectives of the program are to (1) increase the leadership skills and capacity of teacher leaders in order to improve student achievement in…