Literacy assessments are transforming the contexts of secondary instruction. This article reports how literacy assessments are shaping the instructional choices of nine English Language Arts teachers who work in three different states in northeastern United States--New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Through interviews, the teachers reported…

Rather than treated as a discreet task or as an overarching orientation, leadership for social justice is more appropriately situated within a comprehensive theory of school administration, such as Starratt's (2003) model of leadership as cultivating meaning, responsibility, and community. Starratt's general model of educational leadership…

There is an increasing interest in the practice of teachers staying with a group of students for more than one year. This is referred to as looping in educational practice. The problem of constant uncertainty or change of a new teacher year to year, creates less academic time and student anxiety. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects…

This book is the only comprehensive guide available that provides all the tools necessary to create an ideal school. There are many education books out there but most are specific to one aspect of school improvement and do not provide a systemic framework or a total approach. This book does, and it is based on expertise that was developed and…

For those concerned with school improvement, resource-oriented mechanisms are a critical facet of efforts to transform and restructure daily operations. Resource-oriented organizational mechanisms focus specifically on ensuring the appropriate use of existing resources and enhancing efforts to address barriers to student learning. This report…

This case study explores the influence of a changing and more diversified leadership on a struggling religiously-affiliated institution, Eureka College of Illinois. Eureka is a liberal arts institution founded by the Disciples of Christ denomination of the Church of Christ during the "Emergent Era" of college building in the mid-1800s.…

This study compared the experiences of women attending women's colleges with those of women attending coeducational institutions. Analyses of data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from random samples of female first-year and senior students from 26 women's colleges and 264 other four-year institutions were conducted. Women at…

The experiences of middle school science teachers at two schools in the southeastern US who participated in collaborative, sustained, whole-school professional development and their implementation of standards-based instructional practices are the focus of this study. Participants were involved in their second year of the professional development…

The purpose of the present study is to examine associations between quality of teacher-child relationships from preschool through third grade and children's third-grade achievement using Phases I, II, and III data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Care and Education, a prospective study of 1,364…

The topic of this article concerns how students make sense of categories of progressive inquiry made available to them through a discussion and inquiry type of software called Future Learning Environments 2 (FLE2). The idea behind tools of this kind is to induce approaches to school-work that build on the metaphor of learning as research. By…

The professional development opportunities and the impact these opportunities had on teachers' instruction were examined through a case study design. This school was selected because it was participating in a reform initiative and had improving student achievement scores. The research questions for this study included: (1) What was the nature of…

This report looks at the experience of those young people who broaden their learning and develop their essential skills by undertaking school-college partnership programmes. Its primary aim is to identify what makes these programmes successful for young people and what needs to be done better. It is intended to help schools, colleges, and local…

A variety of preschool curricula is available and in widespread use, however, there is a lack of evidence from rigorous evaluations regarding the effects of these curricula on children's school readiness. The lack of such information is important as early childhood center-based programs have been a major, sometimes the sole, component of a number…

Action Learning is now a well established strategy for reflective inquiry in healthcare. Whilst a great deal is know about action learning there has been inadequate research on the process of learning that takes place, and the impact that this holds for individuals, groups or organisations. This article reports on the findings of 15-month action…

In this article we argue that the asset-based approach is one explanation for sustainability in programmes supporting vulnerable children. We structure our argument by formulating five questions and then pursuing tentative answers to them. We start our contention by highlighting the particularity of the challenges faced in schools to support…