Teaching is challenging in part because, although school structures are to some extent modelled on industrial approaches in which the "raw materials" are assumed to be very similar, human beings are endlessly diverse. Understanding the many differences amongst students, and treating these differences as teaching resources rather than…

Digital badges are electronic representations of learning and skills mastery (Ferdig & Pytash, 2014; Grant, 2014). Like achievements or badges in video games, digital badges are earned by accomplishing a skill or acquiring knowledge after completing an activity. The idea behind their creation seems to be acknowledging that learning can and…

Teachers and administrators attest that the current workshop and seat-time approach to professional development has not been working. Microcredentials offer a new approach. Inspired by the badging movement, microcredentials offer teachers opportunities to document their learning using work samples, videos, and other artifacts. Based on this…

In this article, veteran educator Otis Kriegel provides eight questions that teachers can ask themselves as they create or tweak lesson plans. With practical, straightforward advice, Kriegel suggests that teachers be mindful of who their audience is, how much students already know, and what materials they'll need. He also urges teachers to…

As online and blended learning gain more popularity in education, it becomes more important to understand their effects on student learning. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of self-paced blended learning of mathematics on the attitudes and achievement of 26 high ability middle school students, and investigate the relationship…

Evidence-based practice related to autism research is a controversial topic. Governmental entities and national agencies are defining evidence-based practice as a specific set of interventions that educators should implement; however, large-scale efforts to generalize autism research, which are often single-subject case designs, may be a setback…

Teachers strive to design instruction that actively engages all students, but a few "back-benchers" often seem to be left out, due to academic struggles, English language skills, personal disinterest, or other factors. Teachers seek to help these students develop into "active and engaged participants" in their classrooms in…

Grade retention in U.S. schools has a long history characterized by fluctuations in the frequency and application of this educational practice. These fluctuations reflect shifts in educators' and policy makers' beliefs about the effectiveness of grade retention and the conditions under which it should be applied. Although retaining students who…

An alternative high school campus in the State of Georgia introduced a new program to support academic growth and engagement among at-risk students. This program, the APEX program, merges technology with content to provide students with self-paced learning facilitated by teachers with the objective of improving test scores, course completion, and…

In 2013 the Vermont legislature enacted Act 77 mandating that students in grades 7-12 develop personalized learning plans (PLPs) to guide them toward high school graduation using proficiency based requirements. In a qualitative self-study the authors document the implementation of a personal learning framework integrating PLPs into a humanities…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively," offers educators three specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenges of teaching students in grades 6-12 to write effectively. This summary focuses on the third of the three recommendations: Use assessments of…

The present study explores Greek primary school teachers' perceptions and views on pupil diversity in the classroom environment. A large-scale survey was carried out in order to examine teachers' perceptions about pupil diversity and to identify personal and/or educational characteristics that can influence or predict these perceptions. The…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the teaching and learning strategies used by homeschool parents with high school students. A qualitative case study was used which began with the administration of an open-ended questionnaire to a homeschool community in the southern United States. Twenty-nine parents completed the…

Educators need ways to assess orthographic knowledge and differentiate word study instruction for secondary, emergent bilingual learners. In this study, the spelling of 199 students in grades 7-12 across eight features and four spelling stages was examined to understand students' orthographic development; all but two were learning Spanish and…

Given that most humanities courses in higher education are already interactive and constructive, it is not clear whether a flipped model of learning adds any additional value to student learning. This study assessed the impacts of flipped learning on EFL learners' performance and perceptions of a two-semester linguistics course in a Taiwan…