Although the COVID-19 situation was stressful for all faculty, staff, and students at Mercyhurst University, it provided a much-needed opportunity to improve assessment practices across the institution. Changing assessment reporting procedures for the 2019-2020 academic year to a more reflective, collaborative model is helping to shift faculty…

Mobile devices, particularly smartphones, have become an integral part of daily lives, and we take them with us almost everywhere we go. In most cases these are examples of informal learning and how we now choose to find and utilise online information and create and share rich media. How then can we use these devices to learn in "formal"…

"Layers of Learning" explores read-aloud strategies designed to enhance your reading and writing standards by capitalizing on the way literature can impact caring communities. With over 200 picture-book suggestions, author JoEllen McCarthy introduces the Heartprint Framework, which demonstrates how you can layer literacy and life lessons…

Today's digitally connected classrooms have the potential to be places for rich and engaged disciplinary learning. This chapter takes two topics that have been identified in the What's Hot in Literacy 2019 study, digital literacies and disciplinary literacies, and illustrates their intersections and synergies. Both areas have remained hot and very…

Practical Implications: Educators should learn how to effectively implement social, emotional, and cultural learning in their literacy classrooms daily. Teacher education preparation programs must examine their curriculum and if needed, revise to include social, emotional, and cultural learning in literacy. [For the complete volume, "What's…

Conversations about liberal education typically focus broadly on mission, goals, curricula, cocurricular educational opportunities, or overall student outcomes. Conversations about teaching and learning, by contrast, are more granular, focusing on what happens in the classroom, the teaching practices that faculty individually or collectively elect…

In "Why Do I Have to Read This?" Cris Tovani shares her best secrets, lessons learned from big fails, and her most effective literacy and planning strategies that hook these hard to get learners. You will meet many of Cris's students inside this book. As she describes some of her favorites, you may even recognize a few of your own. You…

How can early and preservice teachers master the complex practice of teaching? This clearly written, research-based guide shows how to successfully navigate coursework, build relationships with mentors, and negotiate fieldwork and student teaching while developing metacognitive thinking skills. These are skills that allow teachers to continuously…

This paper traces Middle Eastern elements in Islamic education in Indonesia by looking at their institutions, curricula, method of teaching, orientations, and Islamic ideological transmission. The information on values and impacts of Indonesian and Middle Eastern Islam takes a one-way traffic pattern in general terms. The dynamics of Islam in…

In the sphere of higher education (HE) globally the tensions between academic autonomy and accountability, and the research vs teaching debate have been ongoing for decades. Zumeta (2011, p. 133) notes one of the reasons for such tensions to be the view of accountability as a social construct, resulting in its definition varying from context to…

While districts and policymakers focus on sweeping changes to schools, teachers can get big results by making comparatively small changes to their daily practice. This companion piece to the McREL book "Tilting Your Teaching" introduces you to the seven Simple Shifts--adjustments that every teacher can make immediately to turn dodgy…

In October of 2019, I presented at the IUPUI Assessment Institute in Indianapolis on the topic of academic program review. While almost every campus conducts program reviews, the definition, purpose, structure, and integration of assessment in program reviews is not universally understood, accepted, or implemented. This paper summarizes essential…

Fluency is the ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories accurately, with enough speed, and expression. It is important to remember that fluency is not an end in itself but a critical gateway to comprehension.

Instructors use prompts to assist learners in acquiring skills and then fade those prompts until responding occurs under the appropriate stimulus control conditions. Cengher et al. "Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities," 30, 155-173 (2018) reviewed studies that compared two or more different prompt-fading procedures. The…

This study explores the teaching practices and labor conditions of media and communication adjunct faculty at three universities. Since the late 1960s, the number of faculty who are part-time and contingent is increasing and adjuncts are now more than 70% of college and university faculty (AAUP, n.d.). In this study, I examine the neoliberal…