Staff Development: Theory and Practice

The importance of strategic planning in education has been increasingly recognised but observations of school principals have shown that little time is apparently devoted to reflective planning. This case study of a secondary college principal, aimed to discover if the reflective practitioner exists by extending non‐participant observation to include the content and timing of a principal's thinking periods. The evidence from observation was also used to find out if planned strategies were translated into actions.     

THE WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA TECHNOLOGY CONSORTIUM: A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Community college presidents face an uphill struggle in preparing their institutions for the rapidly changing technological learning environment. Visionary presidents in rural community colleges are presented with yet another challenge: that of finding themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide. This article describes how presidents of 12 rural community colleges in the mountains of western North Carolina formed a technology consortium to collaboratively address critical technology issues. Integral steps in the joint venture were a combined assessment and planning process authorized by the presidents, formation of the Western North Carolina Technology Consortium, and an e-commerce project designed to meet the needs of small busi-nesses and entrepreneurs in the region. Lessons learned and implications for practice are presented for community college presidents seeking ways to collaborate.     

Relationship between developmentally appropriate beliefs and practices of pre‐service teachers

Abstract

This article explores the meaning of professionalism as it relates to early childhood teacher education. The poignant need for such professionalism is timely within the context of contemporary policies that have the potential to de‐skill educational professionalism as well as minimize the breadth and depth of early childhood education. After exploring problems/issues associated with a number of specific policies with such potential, an action plan and strategies for implementing such a plan are proposed. Now that early childhood teacher certification has been receiving increased attention in several states, the author concludes with what she feels is a problem worthy of immediate attention—greater school administrator preparation in early childhood curriculum.     

Text Analysis in R

Computational text analysis has become an exciting research field with many applications in communication research. It can be a difficult method to apply, however, because it requires knowledge of various techniques, and the software required to perform most of these techniques is not readily available in common statistical software packages. In this teacher’s corner, we address these barriers by providing an overview of general steps and operations in a computational text analysis project, and demonstrate how each step can be performed using the R statistical software. As a popular open-source platform, R has an extensive user community that develops and maintains a wide range of text analysis packages. We show that these packages make it easy to perform advanced text analytics.     

Correction to: Educational Psychology Early Career Award Winners: How Did They Do It?

Educational Psychology Review -