The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits of higher education in mid-life from the perspective of life course agency. Studies concerning the benefits of degree-oriented higher education have been mainly conducted using survey questionnaires and quantitative methods. In order to gain a more comprehensive picture, this qualitative…

This paper discusses academic mobility in Brazil over the past few years due to the increase in governmental initiatives to promote internationalization of higher education and student mobility. The aim is to address the challenges faced by the international academic mobility program Science without Borders (SwB) to boost the development of…

Much has been published about developing a cybersecurity curriculum for institutes of higher learning (IHL). Now that a growing number of IHLs globally offer such programs, a need exists on how to guide, maintain, and improve the relevancy of existing curricula. Just as cybersecurity professionals must be hone their skills continually to keep with…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Lessons Learned: Graduate Student Assessment (Michael Cherry and Lesley Page); (2) Assessing the Assessor: A Response to Fulcher and Bashkov's "Do We Practice What We Preach? The Accountability of an Assessment Office" (Christine Robinson, John G. M.…

Since 1980 when Zimbabwe obtained political independence, special education has not received the same priority as the entire education system. One of the manifestations of this discrepancy is the shortage of qualified special education teachers in the country. In order to address this trend and promote the development of special education,…

Many school-improvement efforts include time for teacher collaboration, with the assumption that teachers' collective work supports instructional improvement. However, not all collaboration equally supports learning that would support improvement. As a part of a 5-year study in two urban school districts, we collected video records of more than…

This multi-method inquiry used (1) quantitative examination of context, characteristics, roles, and responsibilities of rural school psychologists compared to their suburban and urban counterparts and (2) qualitative examination of two focus groups of rural school psychologists. Results showed that rural school psychologists served more schools,…

Teacher education faculty developed an innovative immersion-based professional development initiative termed High Impact Immersion Experience (H.I.I.E.) to address the problem of novice preservice teachers' lack of experience working in high-poverty schools with significant cultural diversity. A qualitative action research approach was designed to…

Immigrant and refugee youth who enter the United States during their secondary school years face a daunting set of challenges. In addition to learning a new language and adjusting to U.S. classroom norms, they must quickly fill gaps in their subject-matter knowledge and pass the courses required to graduate high school before aging out of the…

The goal of this study was to examine the professional development experiences of two contrastive participants while they were creating standards-based individualized education plan (IEP) goals using a virtual world called TeacherSim. Two specific focuses of the study were on how special educators engaged with the task of creating standards-based…

While discussion protocols can provide helpful structures for conversations about data and other collaborative work, some drawbacks have been noted; for example, protocols can preclude discussion about important topics that are not within the scope of the protocol. Prior research has not yet explored how educators' personal identities and…

For school librarians, being part of a "connected" community provides support for getting specific needs met, solving personally relevant and meaningful problems, and developing professional expertise. AASL provides many avenues for members of the profession to learn with and from one another. These include AASL and subgroup electronic…

This study investigated outcomes of the provision, by one Australian and two U.K. universities, of bridging programs that allow registered Malaysian nurses to upgrade their diploma qualifications to degree level. The study was informed by current literature on Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) programs. Not sufficiently explored in the…

This study aims to determine if "Facebook," when used as an online teacher portfolio (OTP), could contribute meaningfully to pre-service teachers' professional development (PD) and in what ways the OTP can be meaningful. Pre-service teachers (n = 91) were asked to develop OTP using "Facebook" and engage in learning and…

This article reports on findings of a study which objective is the development of an instrument for systematic evaluation and improvement of the quality of teaching in special schools. The article describes the research process which led to the construction of the instrument as well as the way teachers can use the instrument to improve the quality…