As part of a multiyear research study on the preparation of educators to use assessment data for instructional improvement, the present study is a pilot test of a research-based professional development intervention for career-technical teachers. Forty-eight educators at nine sites in five states participated in a 1-day workshop followed by…

The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to analyze the effect of one type of professional development, Japanese lesson study, on student achievement at the high school level. The study examined the effect by comparing student achievement of students with non-lesson study teachers (control group) and those using the lesson…

In this article, the author argues that if we want teachers to help students develop voice and fluency as writers, we need to provide opportunities for teachers to engage in the same kind of work. In a course called "Writing, Reading and Teaching Poetry" that is part of the Master's Degree program in English Education at Lehman…

This monograph describes and analyzes the particular processes and structures that the New York City Writing Project (NYCWP) directors and on-site teacher-consultants have developed that enable them to support and learn from each other and to reflect critically upon the work they do with teachers, students, and administrators. Over time the…

Pattern language is the lexicon used to express the schema of a field of professional practice (Smethurst, 1997). This lexicon is frequently presumed to exist in communities of practice in educational settings, although the findings derived from the longitudinal study of schools (Elmore, 1996; Goodlad, 1984; Lortie, 1975; McLaughlin & Talbert,…

The focus of this article revolves around democratic learning communities and the work of P-12 teachers and educational leaders as spatialized practice. Through a critical pragmatic lens, we explore what is necessary to transform the social space of contemporary schools into democratically practiced places of learning for teachers: democratic…

Behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning view learning as a process of individual internalisation. Social theorists view learning as a process that is socially constructed and developed in social contexts. Wenger suggests that professional practice is a social process that is constructed in communities. Mentoring in Initial Teacher…

Academic mentoring is increasingly being used by many universities as a tool to enhance the quality of research-led teaching, promote cross-faculty collaboration and encourage a mentoring culture and community. This article reports on a pilot project established to investigate the benefits of building flexibility into a structured academic…

Professional development is critical in supporting teachers' use of technological tools in classrooms. This review of empirical research synthesizes the effective elements of professional development programs that support science teachers in learning about technology integration. Studies are examined that explore how professional development…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of the United Nations University's Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE) initiative--the global process created to support the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014)--and discuss the…

This study explored the content-based literacy instruction of English language learners (ELLs) across multiple classroom settings in U.S. elementary schools. The following research questions guided the study: (a) How are ELLs taught English in two types of instructional settings: regular content-area literacy instruction in the all-English…

The Adolescent Literacy Collaboratory is one model for sharing literacy leadership responsibility at the secondary school level. With the help of computer technology (PCs), it brings teachers and literacy leaders from multiple departments and multiple schools together to learn from and with one another in overlapping professional learning…

Biology in Context ("bik") is a project that aims to improve biology teaching in lower secondary schools in Germany. Based on a theoretical framework derived from the National Educational Standards, four competence areas should be fostered in biology education: subject knowledge; inquiry acquisition; subject-related communication; and…

In order to assess how completely a Small Learning Community (SLC) and/or Career Academy is implemented in any given site, and to connect the degree of implementation with the amount of improvement in student performance, two kinds of information are needed. The first is information on the quality of implementation, which can be collected by…

The causal relationships among the three presences in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are explored and tested in this paper. The CoI framework has been used extensively in the research and practice of online and blended learning contexts. With the development of a survey instrument based on the CoI framework, it is possible to test the…