This report focuses on the seven original Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) projects selected for funding in 2003. Three of the original seven projects were selected for a national random assignment evaluation in 2005; however, this report only focuses on program operations prior to joining the random assignment evaluation for the three…

District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) is a state-funded program in Texas that provides grants to districts for the implementation of locally-designed performance pay plans. All districts in the state are eligible to receive grants, but participation is voluntary. As D.A.T.E. continues in its second year of operation with approximately…

Professional development that improves teaching and student learning meets research-based standards to ensure high-quality educator learning experiences. Since the quality of professional learning affects its results, many states, districts, and schools want to measure the effectiveness of their professional development to make targeted…

School improvement activities have commonly been treated as objects of study, constituting "research on" school improvement rather than "design of" school improvement. The key elements in a school improvement effort design involve particularizing for the instant situation the operational referents for the terms: school,…

One faces several challenges when designing an education abroad program. These include engaging non-traditional majors in study abroad experiences; facilitating learning activities that directly align with the learning goals of the courses; assessing specific learning outcomes; and finding ways to close the circle after the study abroad programs…

The portability and immediate communication properties of mobile devices influence the learning processes in interacting with peers, accessing resources and transferring data. For example, the short message and browsing functions in a cell phone provide users with timely and adaptive information access. Although many studies of mobile learning…

In this article, relevance of practice during university studies is highlighted, as well as the main stages of its organisation, qualitative parameters, as well as criteria and indicators that validate them are defined. Discussion on the idea that taking into consideration qualitative parameters of organising practice as a component of studies…

As American society becomes increasingly diverse, it is paramount that university graduate programs produce culturally responsive leaders capable of synergistically energizing an increasingly heterogeneous work force. Inherent in this charge is the egalitarian approach to graduate program design. Culturally responsive leadership development is…

Building a gifted program from scratch? Evaluating or changing your program? This CD with exciting PowerPoint slides and manual will give you everything you need for staff development, and will allow you to customize sessions for parents or school boards. The manual contains background material with references as well as reproducible pages …

This study investigated the attitudes of principals toward the legitimacy of pre-service teacher preparation programs conducted wholly or almost wholly online. Random cluster sampling was utilized to select participants in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. A total of 326 principals completed questionnaires. Principals expressed apprehension about…

Design is critical to the successful development of any interactive learning environment (ILE). Moreover, in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) the design process requires input from many diverse areas of expertise. As such, anyone undertaking tool development is required to directly address the design challenge from multiple perspectives. We…

One in five students report experimenting with tobacco before the age of 13 and most prevention efforts take place in the school setting. This study measures the effect of a single-lesson tobacco prevention curriculum, conducted by a health education center, focusing on knowledge of tobacco, ability to identify refusal techniques, and intent not…

The capacity of any professional development effort to achieve durable change in teacher practice is affected by a host of design factors and their precise alignment with multiple delivery strategies. However, how successful professional development (PD) programs achieve an effective mix of these factors and strategies is not well understood. The…

An examination of the professional socialisation process is critical in changing the way graduates are trained and how they are supported post graduation. This article summarises key mechanisms to facilitate socialisation from recent socialisation studies undertaken in the fields of medicine, physical therapy nursing, occupational therapy, and…

Despite the multifaceted role language plays in promoting direct and indirect violence, activities that would develop the linguistic knowledge and critical language skills for understanding how discourse shapes individual and group beliefs and prompts social action are conspicuously absent from peace education. This article aims to address this…