The Northeast Regional Resource Center (NERRC) convened national and regional technical assistance (TA) providers and State Education Agency (SEA) teams for two days of focused work on teacher quality. The meeting was held at the Learning Center, Marlborough, Massachusetts, May 4-5, 2006. The purpose of the National Center for Improving Teacher…

Australian public policy adopted the concept of lifelong learning in the 1980s and harnessed it to human capital theory to articulate a new policy emphasis on "up-skilling" the Australian labour force. This paper addresses the question of how this conception of lifelong learning has fared in practice as Australian Commonwealth government…

In 2003, the American Association of Colleges and Universities issued its National Panel Report: Greater Expectations, A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. The report states: "Students will continue to pursue different specializations in college. But across all fields, the panel calls for higher education to help college students…

The study investigated the efficacy of prospective teachers authoring and using their own online learning designs as a means of creating links between theory classes and their teaching practicum. Trainee primary and secondary teachers adopted an exemplary, well-researched learning design to inform their own specific task designs, and used them in…

Secondary-school systems throughout the world are preoccupied with technology integration in subject teaching and learning. Advocacy of the educational use of new technologies often seems to suggest that their value is evident, their adoption urgent, their implementation unproblematic, and their impact transformative. However, the recent…

It is a challenge for teacher educators to develop innovative pedagogical practices amongst initial teacher education (ITE) students when much of their learning is gained in schools where practice is slow to change. This paper examines two such practices which are currently being promoted through government policy for children's education in…

The purpose of the study reported in this chapter was to determine if senior evaluation consultants experienced stages of growth in their practice similar to the small business development stages described by Bruce and Scott, to identify the stimuli that led to those changes, to determine what the consultants learned from these incidents, and to…

This Practice Guide is the first in a series of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) guides in education that are developed by a panel of experts. The guides are intended to bring the best available evidence and expertise to bear on the types of systemic challenges that cannot currently be addressed by single intervention or programs. This…

For the thirtieth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the National AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…

This article presents findings from a case study on the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) in Nottingham, England, an exemplary program that bridges the theory-to-practice gap using distributed leadership philosophies to develop leadership among school administrators and has manifested a positive impact on school leadership in England.…

Background: Many scholars have called for physical education to be part of interdisciplinary units at the elementary level. The study of Native American cultures is required in most North American elementary schools. Folk dance, however, has traditionally included Western European folk dances, square dance, and, more recently, line dancing. In our…

This book presents an instructional improvement system based on critical instructional factors identified by research. Teaching activities are provided for each of four components of effective teaching--planning, managing, delivering, and evaluating instruction. For each component, several teaching principles are identified and explained, and for…

This book, which focuses on the language arts teacher/researcher, is offered as a testament to teachers' expanding participation in collecting data and building theories about teaching, learning, curriculum, and assessment. The book's 24 chapters are grouped into four parts. The first part addresses general issues about teacher research: its…

This case study examines the teaching practices of Alan Woods, (pseudonym) who teaches elementary students in an outdoor education program. It describes a typical teaching day, including Alan's comments about his work and important aspects of being an outdoor educator. Alan stated that he used recitation questioning (asking students to recite…

Educational administration, like many other social sciences, has traditionally followed the rubrics of classical science with its emphasis on prediction and control and attempts to understand the whole by understanding in ever finer detail how the parts fit together. However, the "new" science (especially quantum mechanics, complexity,…