This randomized controlled field trial examined the efficacy of the Responsive Classroom (RC) approach on student achievement. Schools (n = 24) were randomized into intervention and control conditions; 2,904 children were studied from end of second to fifth grade. Students at schools assigned to the RC condition did not outperform students at…

Using observations and interviews, the researchers explore the experiences and perspectives of students, teachers, and administrators at six specialized high schools with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as they pertain to the practices and structures affecting student outcomes. Four themes were found to be…

Effective teaching has long been an issue of national concern, but in recent years focus on the effectiveness of programs to produce high-quality teachers has sharpened. Long-standing achievement gaps persist despite large-scale legislative changes at the federal and state levels, and American students continue to show poorer performance on…

This presentation will answer the following research questions: (1) What was the intended implementation of the training and coaching component of Foundations of Learning (FOL)?; (2) To what extent was the training and consultation implemented as intended?; and (3) How did the combined training and coaching model utilized in the FOL project…

In schools across America, teachers know who among their peers is doing the best work and who is not. Yet the nation's evaluation systems tend to foster the notion that all teachers perform the same way, with the same results for students. Indeed, in an attempt at equality--uniform treatment for everyone--current evaluation systems often end up…

For four years, a nine-member team studied 31 highly effective teachers in nine low-performing urban elementary, middle, and high schools in some of the most economically depressed neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. The teachers were selected based on having had the highest percentage of students moving up a level on the English/Language Arts or…

This article reports on research into Chinese students' perceptions of a pilot key skills' communication course introduced in three vocational education institutions in China. The course was based on key skills' criteria formulated in 2004 by China's Vocational Qualification Appraisal Committee and produced in response to the changing demands of…

The growing body of research on the use of vignettes in teacher education courses suggests that vignette-based instruction and assessment tasks may represent a viable alternative to traditional forms of scaffolded instruction and reflective essays following classroom observations, thereby creating a bridge between college and K-12 classrooms for…

This paper focuses on eight teachers nominated as effective in teaching reading to 11-13-year-old students. Data consisted of interviews and unstructured and structured observations of the guided reading lessons. The qualitative data and their analysis explored the research participants' views to give more detail and filter the quantitative…

A case study examines a 5th-grade teacher's orchestration of discourse and interaction to create opportunities for English language learners to participate in the repair of mathematical errors during a unit on finding the area of geometric shapes. The findings detail how the teacher used gestures in grounding her questioning, revoicing students'…

Through this study the authors evaluate outcomes associated with the use of handheld computers by interventionists in improving the efficiency of direct systematic classroom observation. Information from observations is used by interventionists for treatment planning and evaluation. In this study, interventionists were trained to use personal…

This article is to report an action research conducted in two sections of a course called Second Language Acquisition and Development during the fall semester of 2011 and the spring semester of 2012. By focusing on a three-way blended learning (BL) environment--face-to-face (F2F), eLearning, and Second Life (SL, a virtual-world environment), this…

Education for sustainability (EfS) in higher education is an emerging specialisation within the general field of EfS. EfS encompasses cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, and aims at enhancing a variety of learning outcomes in these domains and reaching students from all programmes. One of the main challenges for higher education…

Teachers' subject knowledge is recognized as an essential component of effective teaching. In the foreign language context, teachers' subject knowledge includes language proficiency. In New Zealand high schools, foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish) have recently been offered to learners earlier in their schooling,…

Providing students with a classroom environment that allows for meaningful learning experiences is important for students to develop deep and long lasting understanding about mathematics. This article adds to the literature on learning environments in mathematics by presenting a case study of one fifth-grade mathematics teacher and her classroom…