With the demand for a demonstration of continuous progress as an accountability gauge in public schools, teachers are compelled to examine assessment data for each of their pupils. This data analysis, in turn, should help teachers gauge their instructional practices and differentiate instruction so that all can reach proficient levels of…

The purpose of this study is to determine how the leadership practices and guiding values of a professional learning community affect the nature of the professional relationships among teachers. For purposes of this study, professional relationships are defined as the purposeful interactions, communications, and connections between teachers…

The body of research on the design, implementation, and effects of performance-based compensation systems has influenced the design and evaluation of the 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants. In the sections presented here, the authors describe the key components of 2010 TIF grants and the conceptual framework for the evaluation. The remainder…

The "Code of Virginia" requires school divisions statewide to submit data to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) on incidents of discipline, crime, and violence (DCV). School divisions began reporting such data in 1991. This annual report focuses primarily on DCV data submitted for school year 2008-2009, with selected comparisons…

The "Code of Virginia" requires school divisions statewide to submit data to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) on incidents of discipline, crime, and violence (DCV). School divisions began reporting such data in 1991. This annual report focuses primarily on DCV data submitted for school year 2009-2010, with selected comparisons…

Latent growth-mixture modeling was used to investigate patterns of change in loneliness for 170 children from third through fifth grades. A three-class model representing unique trajectories of loneliness provided the best overall fit to the data, including a Stable Low group (65%), as well as groups of Increasers (23%) and Decreasers (12%).…

Research on women in leadership has received growing attention in recent years. But not enough studies have investigated the way women construct leadership and management of the academic department. This article reports on the findings of an inquiry into the experiences of women heads of academic departments (HoDs) at universities in South Africa…

While many freshman composition textbooks offer cursory instruction on how to conduct field research, very little information exists on teaching undergraduates field research methods. Such instruction often occurs during graduate school. However, in order to become polished writers and researchers, and to see firsthand how research enhances…

This report describes a follow-up qualitative study, conducted in 2006 by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, of a small group of New York City high schools that were "beating the odds" in preparing low-performing 9th-grade students for timely high school graduation and college going. The 13 schools included two long-established…

This article describes a virtual reality role-playing game that was developed as a survey tool to collect travel behavior data and explore and monitor travel behavior adaptation. The Advanced Energy and Material Systems Laboratory has designed, developed a prototype, and tested such a game platform survey tool, called Travel Activity Constraint…

This paper reports on a new pedagogy for Chinese language teaching and learning at elementary schools through exploratory classroom instruction using Information and Communication Technologies. The study used quantitative method to collect data from two elementary schools of China. The results showed that: (1) the three-in-one pedagogy of…

The potential of librarians working in e-science, a term for using the Internet and other digital tools to facilitate scientific data collection, management, and sharing, has been the cause of much discussion. Many professionals agree that librarians could participate in or facilitate e-science tasks. This article explores what e-science…

Inherent in classroom research are the inevitable, and often unanticipated, challenges experienced by researchers. This article moves beyond the main issues highlighted in the literature and identifies some of the problems the authors encountered when conducting two common methodological procedures, classroom observations and stimulated recall…

Similar to other institutions, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has determined that a relationship may exist between student performance as defined by grades, and activity in the campus' online course management system (CMS). Specifically, since Fall 2007, UMBC's "Most Active Blackboard Courses" reports show students…

For the forty-second time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes. Volume 1 contains papers dealing…