Research Findings: The current study investigated the predictive utility of teacher-rated, observed, and directly assessed behavioral self-regulation skills to academic achievement in preschoolers. Specifically, this study compared how a teacher report (the Child Behavior Rating Scale), an observer report (the Observed Child Engagement Scale), and…

This study investigated the use of observations as techniques for assessing secondary school students in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The participants were 360 teachers selected from all the secondary schools in the 3 Senatorial Districts of Ekiti State, Nigeria using simple random sampling technique. The instrument employed for data collection was a…

The infant-parent class offers the school's first opportunity for a prepared environment and utilizes observation as an important tool for parents. Purposeful work is given to both parents and their young children. Montessori principles, such as teaching sensitive periods for language and movement, convey one activity at a time for bringing…

NCLB waiver requirements have led to development of teacher evaluation systems, in which student growth is a significant component. Recent empirical research has been focusing on metrics of student growth--value-added scores in particular--and their relationship to other metrics. An extensive set of recent teacher-evaluation studies conducted by…

Unfortunately, for the most part, teachers do not teach the Nature of Science (NOS). Even when teachers have adequate NOS knowledge, their knowledge still does not make its way into practice. While there are various reasons for this happening, this study has isolated other, more typical, constraints to teaching in order to look more closely at the…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the new media ecologies of urban, low-income youth and youth of color, and how they develop literacies and competencies around technology in the particular spaces of Community Technology Centers (CTCs), while placing them within their broader technological experiences and raced, classed, and gendered…

The focus of this study centers on the way instructors, and more specifically, instructors within a programmatic initiative, think about teaching and the decision-making process they employ to design learning experiences for an online environment. Often administrative initiatives do not consider the unique individual instructor needs when planning…

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine vernacular music making in higher education. The participants, undergraduate music education majors (N = 23 for Fall, N = 10 for Spring), were investigated throughout the course of the 2012-2013 academic year. A constructivist philosophical framework was applied and data were collected using…

South Korean adolescents' motivation for high academic achievement is strongly influenced by extraordinary parental support, pressures to achieve, and the practice of utilizing both public and private learning environments in South Korea. To remain competitive, educational leaders may benefit from observations of other countries' academic…

Expanded Learning Time (ELT) is seen as one promising approach for improving academic achievement, particularly in the nation's chronically low-performing schools. Since 1995, Citizen Schools (CS) has developed and supported the implementation of its own ELT model. The CS ELT model uses an additional shift of educators and community volunteers to…

Context: In the past two years, states have implemented sweeping reforms to their teacher evaluation systems in response to Race to the Top legislation and, more recently, NCLB waivers. With these new systems, policymakers hope to make teacher evaluation both more rigorous and more grounded in specific job performance domains such as teaching…

Many states are in the process of adopting rigorous, standards-based teacher evaluation systems in order to address and increase teacher accountability for student achievement. In the newly adopted Educator Effectiveness evaluation system, Pennsylvania classroom teachers were evaluated through one of two evaluation protocols, both aligned to…

This qualitative case study explored 4 middle grades teachers' naïve theories of motivation, and the links between these theories and their thoughts and actions related to motivation. Their naïve theories of motivation stemmed from their overall visions for teaching, and their strong identities as middle grades educators. These naïve theories also…

The Association for Middle Level Education advocates for instruction that incorporates active learning and multiple learning approaches in middle grades classrooms. The aim of this qualitative study was to examine middle level teachers who are able to implement active learning and multiple learning approaches within the standardized testing and…

Problem-solving skills are often identified as a key component of 21st century education. This study collected data from students enrolled in a university-level Liberal Education science course called "Problems and Puzzles," which introduced students to the theory and practice of problem solving via puzzles. Based on classroom…