Districts are an important unit for administrative purposes, but they vary little in their impact on students' attainment, at least in the UK. Further, government attempts to raise attainment are often disappointing. The project described in this article aimed to engage schools in reform to change students' attainment and attitudes in schools…

Background: Community care is the support of people with intellectual disability in everyday life aimed at enhancing their integration into society. This article investigates influences of organizational characteristics on the implementation of community care in the Netherlands. In addition, we explored whether the attributes of community care as…

STEM--the catchy shorthand for "science, technology, engineering and mathematics"--has been part of the school improvement discussion for more than a decade, as educational leaders and policy makers have underscored the importance of these areas in preparing students for an internationally competitive, 21st-century economy. But while the…

Informed by the results of a baseline research study of regional citizen knowledge and understanding concerning watershed issues, a team of university faculty and classroom teachers designed and implemented a water conservation education program to address lacking areas of watershed knowledge. The authors developed age-appropriate, hands-on…

The American Physiological Society (APS) and APS Council encourage the teaching of physiology at the undergraduate, graduate, and medical school levels to support the continued prominence of this area of science. One area identified by the APS Council that is of particular importance for the development of future physiologists (the…

Successfully reintegrating long-term prisoners back into the community often presents significant challenges for service providers. Ex-prisoners typically experience high levels of social stigma; present with multiple needs; and can struggle to find meaningful employment, stable accommodation, and to maintain supportive relationships. There have,…

The field of literacy education has long been concerned with the question of how to help classroom teachers improve their practices so that students will improve as readers. Although there is consensus on what characterizes effective professional development, the reading research on which this consensus is based most often is small scale and…

While many studies conducted outside China attest to the importance of parental support in determining the extent of success in implementing a bilingual education (BE) programme, few empirical studies have been conducted into the strength of parental support for Chinese-English BE in mainland China. This paper reports upon a survey targeting…

School accountability and student assessment are closely associated in educational jurisdictions' attempts to monitor student achievement, focus instruction, and improve subsequent student and school performance. The research reported in this article examines the School Effectiveness Framework in Ontario, Canada, exploring the foundations upon…

Restructuring large schools into smaller, more personalized learning communities focused on developing students academically, socially, and emotionally has the potential to produce better outcomes for students. Although small school reform in large urban high schools has been the focus of the research literature on school reform in the last…

After providing technical assistance to the federal Smaller Learning Community Program grantees, the authors developed five lessons for successful programs: 1) A strong vision of improved instruction needs to drive high school reorganization; 2) A strong vision of improved instruction focuses on strengthening the instructional core; 3)…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of student learning from community engagement by critically assessing the implementation of this pedagogical approach in the context of teaching and learning chemistry and also evaluating the role of personal development in student-community engagement.…

Messy collaboration refers to complexity, unpredictability and management dilemmas when educators work together. Such messiness was evident in a Hong Kong English Learning Study, a structured cyclical process in which teachers and researcher-participants from a teacher education institution work collaboratively on effective student learning. This…

Global food security and sustainability, animal welfare, dietary health, and socially just relations of food production have become prominent societal issues. They are of particular concern for young people as their lives progress towards becoming independent consumers and citizens with the capacity to shape food systems of the future. This paper…

Research has shown that honors programs often provide active networks of students that contribute to the development of the students' talents (De Boer & van Eijl; van Eijl, Pilot & Wolfensberger). These contact networks are also described as "learning communities" (Wilson et al.) and "honors communities" (van Eijl,…