V Darleen Opfer

• RAND Corporation

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The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M) aim to engage students in complex mathematical practices, including modeling, reasoning, and argumentation. Currently, little is known about how teachers’ daily instruction supports these practices. This study draws upon data from daily logs completed by third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade mathe...

We examine a range of options for recruiting teachers into a nationally representative survey panel. Recruitment strategies considered include a telephone-based approach and the use of promised incentives and pre-incentives of varying amounts and forms. Using a randomized experiment, we evaluate the effectiveness of five separate recruitment strate...

In this chapter, we discuss the importance of school orientation to teacher learning for cultivating ecologies of innovation. A supportive ecology is one where the relationships between school practices for organisational and teacher learning and teachers’ values on those practices are a focus of a school’s critical self-evaluation and double-loop...

For students to learn 21st-century skills, we will have to teach them differently than we have in the past. The outdated, transmission model, through which teachers transmit factual knowledge to students via lectures and textbooks, remains the dominant approach to compulsory education in much of the world, yet it is not the most effective way to te...

Through its positive influence on teachers’ classroom practices and their students’ learning, effective professional learning of teachers is an important condition for school improvement. However, the Teaching and Learning International Survey reports that teachers’ professional development in most countries falls short of meeting the needs of teac...

This article focuses on the planning and organisation of teachers’ continuous professional development as part of the nationally representative Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England – State of the Nation research study (SoNS), commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). Thematic analysis of data devel...

The purpose of this article is to bring together findings developed from the Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England – State of the Nation Study. This large-scale national study, commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, investigated the range and kinds of continuing professional development (CPD) activitie...

Purpose: This study makes a distinction between a school having high attrition and one having difficulties in hiring. It does so by exploring the relationship between definitions of hard-to-staff schools, school demographics, and school conditions that are often associated with a school being hard-to-staff. Research Design: The study relies on a su...

This article adopts a complexity theory framework to review the literature on teachers’ professional development practices, the generative systems of these practices, and the impact that learning experiences have on their knowledge and changes in classroom practices. The review brings together multiple strands of literature on teacher professional...

This article presents a theoretical argument for assuming that schools have an orientation to learning that influences both whether teachers learn and also whether they change professionally as a result of the learning. This school-level orientation to learning is hypothesized to consist of beliefs and practices about learning. Results from a struc...

This paper explores three influences on the effectiveness of teacher professional development for improving schools – the individual teacher, the learning activities in which teachers participate and the structures and supports provided by schools for teacher learning. It does so by relying on survey data collected for a national study of teacher p...

This paper uses results from a national survey of teachers in England to test a hypothesised model of teacher orientation to learning (consisting of beliefs, practice and experiences about learning) and its relationship to teacher learning change. Results from a structural equation modeling process of 1126 teacher survey responses show that teacher...

This paper sets out to investigate issues of access to continuous professional development faced by teachers in England. Specifically, the paper attempts to understand the types of CPD activities that are offered to teachers, the types of activities in which teachers participated and whether a disconnect occurs between activities offered and those...

This article focuses on the planning and organisation of teachers' continuous professional development as part of the nationally representative Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England – State of the Nation research study (SoNS), commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). Thematic analysis of data devel...

This article introduces the Schools and Continuing Professional Development State of the Nation study (SoNS). Discussion of English policy together with an account of the study's aims and research design provide a context for the other articles included in this special issue. A key assumption behind the research, and the prevailing CPD policy conte...

Reported here is one part of the nationally representative, Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England – State of the Nation research study which was funded by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). This paper sets out to understand how teachers and school leaders in England perceive the benefits and effectiveness of...

High stakes accountability (HSA) reforms were enacted in state after state and federally through the No Child Left Behind law, based on the belief that incentives that have consequences attached are effective ways to motivate educators to improve student performance. Our focus for this article is on school district level responses to HSA reforms th...

Most researchers who have investigated the relationship between the media and education have asserted that coverage of education has a negative impact on public perceptions of, and support for, public education. Much of this research relies on negative case examples and cross-sectional data to make this claim. This article calls into question the a...

This article relies on a case study of a policy evaluation to illustrate how issues of social justice arise for action or inaction in a political environment. The article uses the case study to show that social justice issue formation is shaped by the personal beliefs of the actors, the prevailing political culture, the evolutionary path of the iss...

Most research on interest groups has focused on theoretical perspectives concerning why members join these groups. Missing from this work is any connection between theories of organizational maintenance (i.e., how an organization forms) and research on influence activity (i.e., what an organization does).This article argues that a connection exists...

This article argues that the characterization of the Religious Right as irrational does damage to progressive educational policy because it obscures the Religious Right's effectiveness in influencing educational policy and is counterproductive for resistance practices. The authors discuss briefly the common views of the Religious Right and critique...

This study focuses on the perceptions of Virginia school board chairmen and superintendents as they relate to local governance issues. These perceptions provide great insight into the problems faced by Virginia school boards—both elected and appointed—in the aftermath of a 1992 law allowing communities to shift from appointed to elected school boar...

This paper provides an account of the evaluation of the OPYEP initiative which aimed to introduce 'project-based learning' into secondary schools in Turkey. The evaluation focused on the induction programme for 160 lead teachers and the extent and quality of innovation that flowed from this. The report draws upon both quantitative and qualitative d...

The nature of globalisation and its affects are an area of intense interest worldwide. These economic and socio-political affects have had a bearing on education. Control of the curriculum and pedagogy is a key area in relation to this. Of particular significance is the way that globalisation is perceived and how these perceptions influence politic...

This paper arises from the current, ongoing evaluation of a national reform project in Turkey. The initiative to introduce project-based learning in secondary schools is being spear-headed in the 150 or so training schools with volunteer teacher leaders. The evaluation uses a number of survey instruments administered to gauge teachers' beliefs and...