13,501 research outputs found

    How Can We Help Our Grantees Strengthen Their Capacity for Evaluation?

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    Many of funders are already committed to evaluation as a tool to improve their programs and strategies, and are seeking ways to engage in this learning process in partnership with grantees. One critical aspect of understanding and growing the impact of grantmaking dollars is supporting the capacity of grantees to assess their progress and adopt a learning for improvement mindset. Many nonprofits already collect and analyze data on program performance and hope to develop more comprehensive learning agendas. However, the nonprofit sector continues to wrestle with finding the resources, time and space to take evaluation to its full potential. This Smarter Grantmaking Playbook piece offers grantmakers ideas for how to provide evaluation capacity support more effectively

    What makes them so good? The constructs used by coaches to identify coaching prowess

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    The criterion which coaches use to judge their peers are extremely pertinent to the study and enhancement of coach development. The aim of this two-part study was to offer insight into how a sample of British sub-elite coaches judged coaching prowess and perceived the nature of the expertise possessed (or perceived to be possessed) by their own self-selected role model coaches. Data from field notes and transcribed conversations with 143 coaches, drawn from over 15 years of conversations, were interpreted following an inductive analysis. Subsequently, follow up focus group interviews involving 15 level three coaches in a range of sports were used to augment and, if appropriate, question these data. Results yielded an array of personal characteristics, which participants used to describe “what” role model coaches did or were like, as opposed to professional or behavioural characteristics that explained “how” they worked. Consideration of these findings offers some areas for immediate exploitation, alongside some key concerns which must be addressed if the trend for social learning based coach development initiatives are to have optimum benefit

    Impact Philanthropy to Improve Teaching Quality: Focus on High-Need Secondary Students

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    Offers models for improving teachers' skills, including through apprenticeships and in-school mentoring; for creating an environment for great teaching through better leadership and whole-school reform; and guidance for donors on the policy environment

    Study support: a national framework for extending learning opportunities

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    Sustaining K-12 Professional Development in Geology: Recurrent Participation in RockCamp

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    Researchers surveyed repeat attendees in a geology professional development program known as RockCamp in order to determine the reasons for their sustained involvement in this program. This article describes their findings, which suggest that the teachers' sustained involvement in the RockCamp Program is stimulated by situated learning experiences stressing a compare, contrast, connect, and construct pedagogy within a supportive learning community. Most teachers cited such reasons as efficacy, fun, right time of life, and support, as well as content, friendship, and methodology as reasons for their continued participation in the program. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

    More questions than answers: the role of practitioner research in professional practice.

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    The concept of the career guidance practitioner viewing themselves as a professional is currently being challenged (Colley and Lewin, 2008; Greer, 2009). During the last decade there has been a concerted effort to support practitioners in engaging with research both as an agent and as a recipient to enhance practice and to drive forward the concept of the professional. This paper presents examples of progress within this endeavour and the views of practitioners who have engaged in research activities, either as part of their role or as dedicated continuing professional development (CPD). Throughout this paper we explore the role of research within the concepts of profession and professional practice; drawing on literature and primary research that captures views from two groups of practitioners. That careers guidance is a profession is an assumed reality for many practitioners and the organisations that represent them (and our own stance is that it is indeed a profession and we refer to it as such throughout this paper)

    Video-enhanced lesson observation as a source of multiple modes of data for school leadership: A videographic approach

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    A growing body of literature recognizes the affordances of video in education, especially in relation to lesson observation and reflection as part of teachers’ initial teacher education and continuing professional development. Minimal attention has been paid to the outcomes of video-enhanced observation as a source of multiple modes of data for reflexive school leadership. This article focuses on the data of three participants from a larger set of nine teachers involved in an over-arching study exploring teachers’ professional knowledge and practices following a recent curriculum change in England. Data from video-stimulated interviews revealed that recorded video can provide school leaders with a window onto the practices and processes of daily school life, illustrated here through a focus on evidence of policy in practice. It is argued that the leadership perspective provides school leaders and managers with the analytical frameworks and competencies for critical interpretation of the data

    The School Sport Partnerships Programe : evaluation of phases 3 and 4, 2003/04

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