Research has shown that teacher education programs are ineffective in preparing teachers for 21st century skills so there exists a need for professional development to improve teachers' knowledge and practices which improve student learning outcomes. Teachers' Professional Development (PD) has been intriguing researchers in the 21st first century…

In this study, I emphasize the need to magnify the voices of English language learners through authentic language and literacy learning using a multifaceted culturally relevant and responsive teaching and learning framework with strong social justice underpinnings. Specifically, through the lens of the sociocultural theory to better recognize,…

The first years of teaching are challenging. Knowledge of the kind of support new teachers require is essential. Existing typologies date back from the 1980s and the early 2000s. The aim of this article is twofold: 1) to validate a typology of novice teachers' support needs using confirmatory factor analysis and 2) to compare these needs in…

This research investigated the potential for curricula at the intersection of the arts and the sciences to develop creative productivity of students. The purpose of this research was to develop a series of rubric assessments to evaluate the content and creative and higher order thinking on a variety of teacher-made lesson plans and student-made…

Learning about heredity is important across the K-12 continuum. However, these ideas may be challenging for students. We examined third-grade students' ideas about heredity in the context of a new, six-week, model-based science unit that uses corn as a model organism to support students' ideas about heredity. We analyzed data collected during…

This study investigated how eleven secondary mathematics teachers used curriculum resources to plan and enact lessons that support the participation of emergent bilingual (EB) students in mathematical practices in their linguistically diverse classrooms. EB students classified as English Learners often experience mathematics as a set of…

Library research studies have provided evidence that teacher-librarians (TLs) impact student academic success; nevertheless, TLs statewide and internationally are at a critical juncture due to stakeholder groups' ambiguous perceptions regarding their influence on student achievement. The problem in this study involves a local independent school…

Despite a rapid growth of Open Educational Resource (OER) availability, Thoms and Thoms (2014) note that few empirical studies examine the impact of OERs on foreign language learning and teaching. This paper presents an action research study investigating the embedding of selected components of DigiLanguages, an OER for Digital Literacies (DLs)…

The population of English language learners (ELLs) is on the rise in the United States, but they are lagging behind English speaking students in several subject areas--including biology. Scholarly literature lacks information on how biology teachers use scaffolding strategies to support ELL students with inquiry skills during online simulations.…

This is the technical appendices for the report, "Supporting English Learners through Technology: What Districts and Teachers Say about Digital Learning Resources for English Learners." Five appendices are included. The appendices are: (1) Methodology; (2) District Context and Teacher Background; (3) Supplemental Exhibits; (4) Data…

The importance of providing pre-service and in-service teachers with sufficient training and practice in integrating technology into their classrooms has led several studies to investigate the possible effects of pre-determined training and practice provided to teachers. However, most of these studies seem to have focussed on teachers' beliefs and…

The difficulty in learning vocabulary is a problem that lies in not anchoring the new items to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. Different categories of associations have been reported to aid facilitating vocabulary acquisition. Collocating vocabulary items is a type of association that is considered to be more efficient in…

This paper sums up partial results of a long-term project aimed at determining specific needs in teaching advanced English students at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Faculty of Education, Palacký University, where both authors have been teaching for more than 15 years. In our advanced English students, we have long observed a tendency…

As social contexts and demands change in the 21st century, pedagogies and policies must adapt to keep up. Increasing emphasis on global preparedness, competitivity, and holistic education alongside a fast-paced, ever-changing environment may make policy implementation difficult. However, Cheng asserts that it is only by understanding the current…

An instructional model can unite school leaders, teachers, and students with shared goals, a shared understanding of how to reach the goals, and a shared vocabulary for discussing progress. In this paper, the authors present an introduction to instructional models and a leadership primer focused on helping school teams cohere around an initiative…