The last 5 years have witnessed growing support amongst government institutions and educational foundations for applying continuous improvement research (CIR) in school settings. CIR responds to the challenge of implementing effective educational innovations at scale by working with practitioners in local contexts to understand ''what works, for…

The Boston Foundation--one of the nation's oldest community foundations--had always been committed to equity and even played an important role during Boston's fractious school desegregation era. But the board knew it could do more and needed to do more; the future well-being of individuals, families, communities and the city as a whole demanded…

The purpose of this case study research was to understand the ways in which an innovative, urban secondary English teacher (Ms. B) approached English Language Arts, when a set, standardized curriculum and testing were in place. The Common Core standards were prescribed within a required module-based presentation format. New literacies pedagogy…

Rittel and Webber (1973) wrote, "The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, because the nature of these problems. They are 'wicked' problems, whereas science has developed to deal with 'tame problems'" (p. 155). Thus, a wicked problem is one where the solution is bound up in its…

Information technology continues to evolve to the point where mobile technologies--such as smart phones, tablets, and ultra-mobile computers have the embedded flexibility and power to be a ubiquitous platform to fulfill the entire user's computing needs. Mobile technology users view these platforms as adaptable enough to be the single solution for…

Purpose: The purpose of this theoretical essay is to discuss recent scholarship in sociocultural studies of literacy -- including two recent books by Peter Smagorinsky (2011) and Luis Moll (2013) and recent articles by Gutierrez and Engestrom -- and to synthesize ideas from this scholarship into a coherent lens for understanding innovations in…

Today, there is a reform in education around the world. The new and advanced technologies brought to our lives by the 21st century and frequently used in our daily lives are now being used for education. They start to come up with different practices in classrooms and schools (Higher Education in Digital Age, 2016). Today, individualized learning…

Picture a wet towel or a puddle of water on a hot, sunny day. An hour later, the towel is dry and the puddle no longer exists. What happened to the water? Where did it go? These are questions that reveal myriad interesting student ideas about evaporation and the water cycle--ideas that provide teachers with a treasure trove of data they can use to…

The design of vocational didactics has to meet special requirements. Six core assumptions are identified: outcome orientation, cultural-historical embedding, horizontal structure, vertical structure, temporal structure, and the changing nature of work. Different approaches and discussions from school-based systems (Spain and Sweden) and dual…

Creativity and innovation are important inputs in the global knowledge economy. However, while the theoretical concepts and the measurement of creativity on the individual level have made considerable progress during the last decades, so-called sectoral approaches to measuring creativity and innovation on the level of aggregate units are less well…

This study demonstrates how action research (AR) that is aimed at scaling-up experiments can be applied to support a strategy formation process (SFP) in a subsidized long-term care network. Previous research has developed numerous AR frameworks to support experiments in various domains, but has failed to explain how to apply AR and action learning…

In accordance with the concept of lifelong education, the Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) system is one flaw of that is recognized or known as a system whose role is to develop individuals with high technical skills as desired by the industry nowadays. Changing times and technology development at this time require changes to the TVET…

In the Just-in-Time Teaching approach, a faculty member assigns readings to students before every class. After the students have done the daily reading, they access a short reading quiz using a course management system (e.g., Moodle). The faculty member uses student responses to the quiz in the preparation of the day's class material and is able…

In this commentary, Gary Henry explains that the Danes have got it right, again. Not only is their voter turnout high to begin with, but they are evaluating ways to increase voter turnout with "random variation" to accurately assess the effects of the innovations. In the Danish 2009 municipal elections, 65.8% turned out to vote, which…

In contemporary society, the fundamental nature of healthcare and healthcare-related research has come under particular scrutiny. While decidedly based upon human need and human care, a wide variety of historical developments often can collide not just with how these services are effected, but even more deeply as to their meaning in human culture.…