This study describes the development and implementation of a college course intended to promote effective teacher-child interactions within the early childhood education setting. One hundred forty-nine early childhood teachers participating in a randomized control trial with the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education (NCRECE)…

Building on J. Dewey's (1907) original work with the laboratory school, the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Texas-Arlington is expanding the original concept to include partners throughout a school system and the community in order to support and advance learning in multiple learning environments. The goal is to…

The role of school leadership in educational reform has reached the status of a truism, and led to major changes in school leader recruitment, selection, training and appraisal. While similar policy trends are evident in East Asia, the empirical knowledge base underlying these measures is distorted and lacking in validation. This paper begins by…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a quantitative content analysis of the conference session programs from the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) annual meetings across five decades spanning from 1960 through 2010. The data cycled through an analysis during four separate phases. In total, 4,605 conference sessions were…

Professionals mostly agree that scientific research should guide practice in education. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA; 2004) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) require that students with disabilities receive research-based practices in the "least restrictive environment." Because the least…

The education of teachers in the United States needs to be turned upside down. Teacher education must shift away from emphasizing academic preparation and course work loosely linked to school-based experiences to programs fully grounded in clinical practice and interwoven with academic content and professional courses. This clinically based…

This paper discusses ongoing research into the role of design and technology education in emerging post industrial economies. Previous work (Hughes et al., 2010) focused on the changing characteristics of textiles technology in modern times and discussed how this could inform a design and technology curriculum related to the needs of a modern…

There is a critical need, according to national policy statements in the United States, to integrate information and communication technologies into instruction, and yet research about the effect of such integration on the literacy learning of at-risk populations is scant. In addition, barriers exist that prevent teachers from realizing the goal…

Education is expanding to include a stronger focus on the practical application of classroom lessons in an effort to prepare the next generation of scholars for a changing world economy centered on collaborative and problem-solving skills for the digital age. "The Handbook of Research on Technology Tools for Real-World Skill Development"…

In this paper we describe the development and refinement of "evidence rules" and "measurement models" within the "evidence model" of the "evidence-centered design" (ECD) framework in the context of the "Packet Tracer" digital learning environment of the "Cisco Networking Academy." Using…

Most school-university partnerships have consisted of pre-service teacher education partnerships, by which colleges of teacher education team up with schools to train future teachers. Proponents of these partnerships claim that they have the ability to transform education through networks of teachers and faculty who are passionate about…

Although the use of physical manipulatives, which have been emphasized to use in preschool education program and primary and secondary mathematics curriculum, in classroom environments is old, it is very new to use virtual manipulatives in classroom environments. The selection, preparation, and the integration to learning environments of both…

This volume is a unique contribution to the study of language policy and education for English Learners because it focuses on the decade long implementation of "English Only" in Arizona. How this policy influences teacher preparation and classroom practice is the central topic of this volume. Scholars and researchers present their latest…

The importance of strong school-university partnerships in bridging the so-called theory practice gap in pre-service teacher education has been well established in the literature. The experiences of pre-service teachers during practicum have in particular been shown to be enhanced where there are strong links between the two educational sectors.…

The nation is in an era of policy reform aimed at improving the productivity and effectiveness of higher education. Major philanthropies and policy groups have converged around variations of the ambitious college completion goals announced by President Obama at the beginning of his administration. But at the same time, many state governments,…