The higher education accountability efforts of the past decade have placed pressures on universities to more rigorously evaluate the quality and outcomes of their programs while the emergence of new methodologies, from big data approaches to business analytics platforms, have also expanded ways of measuring the quality and return on investment of…

The next generation of professors will come from today's graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, but we do not know much about their preparation to use research-validated teaching practices. This study characterizes the teaching beliefs of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who represent future geoscience instructors though we…

This paper attends to challenges for postsecondary science education improvement initiatives, notably understanding and responding to the realities guiding educators' teaching practices. We explored 16 postsecondary biology educators' instructional planning, providing novel insights into why educators select certain strategies over others,…

This article describes a project initiated to address the challenges of providing high-quality professional development to teachers in rural schools. Spread over the vast northwest corner of Colorado, where it takes over two hours to drive from one end of the region to the other, the Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services (NW…

Obesity prevention in youth is a health priority, and teaching healthy habits toward this end is one of a school nurse's many responsibilities. A school nurse developed and implemented a school-wide, 2-week-long Activity and Nutrition Challenge (ANC) using the evidence-based 5-2-1-0 initiative to prevent and fight childhood obesity. Despite…

In the last twenty years, the educational system has seen a drastic increase in the number of individuals served under the category of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); which has led to an emphasis on ways in which to meet the needs of this multifaceted group of students. Although evidence-based practices (EBPs) have been identified for this…

Behavioral social work is the application of behavior analysis to the field of social work. There are behavioral social work interventions for individuals, groups, and communities. Nevertheless, behavioral social work is far from a widely adopted approach among social work practitioners. A reason for the underuse might be seen in the fact that…

Observation and performance feedback to support traditional training methods are central tools for preservice practitioner preparation and in-service practitioner professional development. Research highlights how some specific characteristics of feedback (e.g., the latency between behavior and feedback) can impact the effectiveness. One method of…

Listening and spoken language (LSL) intervention and education have emerged as the preferred terms representing an intervention perspective that promotes "auditory oral" outcomes for many of today's children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH), including those who are English learners. Practitioners (including speech-language…

Contribution: This paper provides evidence that computational creativity exercises (CCEs) can increase engineering students' learning in introductory computer science (CS1) courses. Its main contribution is its more rigorous treatment/control group research design that allows testing for causal influences of CCEs on student learning and…

Postsecondary institutions need well-prepared instructors to equip students for changing economic and social realities, instructors who are also trained to address the learning needs of the many students who enter college unprepared to learn and persevere in a program of study. Unlike teacher preparation for kindergarten through twelfth grade, a…

Research demonstrates young children with autism and other developmental disabilities can benefit from participation in play activities with peers. Play provides opportunities to increase social skills across developmental domains in an integrated manner and provides opportunities to develop a sense of belonging and friendship; these goals…

Many special education (SPED) students are failing the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) despite writing instruction provided by SPED teachers. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' perceptions about why students were failing the literacy/writing test and document whether evidence-based assessment and writing practices…

The purpose of this dissertation research is to evaluate the sustained use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) with fidelity by high school personnel working with students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a comprehensive educational intervention once the support from the…

This mixed methods study explored how elementary school teachers who use Twitter extensively use it to support their professional learning and development. Four research questions guided this study: 1. How are teachers using Twitter for their professional learning and development? 2. What do teachers report learning from their use of Twitter? 3.…