Circles of Support aim to enable people with learning disabilities (and others) to live full lives as part of their communities. As part of a wider study of the economic case for community capacity building conducted from 2012 to 2014, we conducted a mixed methods study of five Circles in North West England. Members of these Circles were…

Between 2009 and 2014, The James Irvine Foundation invested $13.4 million through the Arts Regional Initiative to build the capacity of a group of nonprofit arts organizations in California locales outside of major arts centers. The aim was two-fold: to increase cultural participation and improve financial sustainability. The following lessons,…

In an effort to support college affordability in the region, the New England Board of Higher Education initiated the "Redesigning Student Aid in New England" project ("Redesigning Aid") in 2014. Funded by Lumina Foundation, "Redesigning Aid" combined custom state financial aid research with expertise of national…

The nation has made an unprecedented investment in community colleges to simultaneously increase college completion and stimulate economic recovery. One of the most substantial investments was the Trade Adjustment Act Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program of the United States Department of Labor (U.S. DOL). Beginning October…

In a time of new teacher certification requirements in New York State, school districts are grappling with how to meet the regulatory expectations imposed by Commissioner's Regulations Part 154. One way that schools are solving staffing challenges is by forging new collaborations with university partners to expand their collective capacities to…

To reach first-generation Extension families and combat barriers faced by Native American youths, North Dakota State University Extension has been involved in the national mentoring program 4-H Youth and Families with Promise (YFP). In the program's fourth year, we conducted ripple effect mapping to explore changes in the schools and communities…

The Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) is among several state-run districts established to turn around underperforming schools. Like other such districts, the ASD removes schools from local control and is not accountable to local political institutions. Despite its authority, the ASD has encountered opposition within Memphis where its…

This article describes mutual accountability, an innovative approach to accountability which opens new possibilities for pursuing educational equity for all students. Mutual accountability calls for each stakeholder -- students, teachers, parents, and administrators -- to work collaboratively in pursuit of educational goals. The article presents…

We examined the relationship between high school and collegiate organizational involvement and their differential and collective effects on the development of leader self-efficacy, motivation to lead and leadership skill. Our goal was to better understand how the student leader development process unfolds at different points in time over young…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how a central district leadership team in an average-size school district in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States negotiated role ambiguity and facilitating conditions for the chief technology officer (CTO) to build successful district technology capacity through a 1:1…

We present enetCollect, a large European network project funded as a COST Action that sets ground for combining crowdsourcing with IT technologies used in areas such as language learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This project tackles a major challenge of bringing together interdisciplinary researchers to foster language learning of…

New academic demands and challenges in schools require increased capacity to support instructional improvement. Capacity comes in many forms: technical, organizational, and political. In addition, there are different sources of capacity, such as the state government and networks. This report examines: (1) What sources of capacity to support…

While active citizenship education programs are assumed to have positive benefits for the active citizenship practice of participants (UNESCO, 2009, p. 4), there is actually little evidence that programs do (de Weerd, Gemmeke, Rigter & van Riji, 2005, p. vii). This paper discusses a research project that aimed to determine and increase the…

This study addresses the complexity of colorblindness as a phenomenon and explains not only its tenacity, but also potential breaks in its hold on school leadership practice. The authors draw from an interview study of 22 school leaders in a county in the Northeastern USA to examine their perceptions and practices associating with leading schools…

Teacher collaboration is a vital factor in successful school reform, and the networks in which educators are embedded support (or constrain) access to essential social capital resources. In this study, authors used social network analysis to examine the changing structure of teacher collaboration networks over the course of a rural District's…