To support school improvement, understanding the mechanisms that enhance teachers' engagement in professional learning activities within schools over time is paramount. The purpose of this three-wave longitudinal study is to examine the role of workplace conditions (school leaders' vision building and teams' shared goals), in supporting teachers'…

Purpose: While in everyday practice, school leaders are often involved in social relationships with a variety of stakeholders both within and outside their own schools, studies on school leaders' networks often focus either on networks within or outside schools. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which principals occupy…

Purpose: School leadership is fundamental in efforts to successfully implement school reform and improve student and teacher learning. Although there is an abundant amount of research on school leaders' formal training, assessment, and practice, little is known about their informal professional learning. In other words, how do school leaders learn…

Low-achieving adolescents are known to have difficulties with reading comprehension. This article discusses how reciprocal teaching can improve low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension in whole-classroom settings (as opposed to small-group settings) and to what extent intervention effects are dependent on teacher behaviour. Over the course…

Purpose: Although it is assumed that school district governance by districts leaders can impact schools' capacity to improvement and educational quality, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how governance goals and interventions affect school districts' social capital.…

Research has demonstrated that in controlled experiments in which small groups are being tutored by researchers, reading-strategy instruction is highly effective in fostering reading comprehension (Palincsar & Brown, "Cognition and Instruction," 1(2), 117-175, 1984). It is unclear, however, whether reading-strategy interventions are…

Improving student achievement through teacher collaboration networks is a current focus of schools in many countries. Yet, empirical evidence on the relationship between teacher networks and student achievement and mechanisms that may explain this relationship is limited. This study examined the relationship between teacher networks and student…

Background/Context: Similar to the United States, government efforts to improve education in the Netherlands are focused on innovation and the development of collaborative structures to support the generation of new knowledge. However, empirical evidence of the relationship between social linkages and innovation in education is scarce. Objective:…

While researchers are currently studying various forms of social network interaction among teachers for their impact on educational policy implementation and practice, knowledge on how various types of networks are interrelated is limited. The goal of this study is to understand the dimensionality that may underlie various types of social networks…

This study examined the effects of metacognitive scaffolds on learning outcomes of collaborating students in an innovative learning arrangement. The triads were supported by computerized scaffolds, which were dynamically integrated into the learning process and took a structuring or problematizing form. In an experimental design the two…

The aim of this study is to better understand the role of researchers and school leaders in supporting school improvement through data feedback in the context of more responsive forms of accountability in the Netherlands. A process evaluation was conducted concerning the first three years of a collaborative project of a multi-management group of…

Throughout the world, educational policy makers, practitioners, and scholars have acknowledged the importance of principal leadership in the generation and implementation of innovations. In many studies, transformational leadership has emerged as a promising approach in response to increasing demands to develop and implement innovations in…

Education policies for greater accountability of schools assume that schools are capable of building their capacity for continuous improvement. While policy-makers, scholars, and practitioners acknowledge the importance of building school-wide capacity for continuous improvement, empirical evidence to this effect remains thin. In this study, we…

Research on motivation has mainly concentrated on the role of goal orientation and self-evaluation in conducting learning activities. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of teachers' teaching and their efficacy beliefs to explain variation in student motivation. Questionnaires were used to measure the well-being, academic…

Purpose: Although it is expected that building schoolwide capacity for teacher learning will improve teaching practices, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. This study aimed to examine the relative impact of transformational leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivational factors, and teacher…