The intent of this qualitative study was to investigate changes in teacher understandings and student achievement as a result of job-embedded coaching, a professional development model. The study focused on the literacy initiative within 1 school district during a 7-year period from 2001 through 2008. Interviews and classroom observations with principals, literacy coaches, and teacher leaders coupled with rich artifacts and documentation provided data for analysis. To change from a traditional model of professional development was a cultural shift for schools, administrators, and teachers. "Remember that a culture of change consists of great rapidity and nonlinearity on the one hand and equally great potential for creative breakthrough on the other" (Fullan, 2001, p. 31). The interviews, observations, and documents illustrated evidence of new teacher understandings and a rise in student achievement coupled with enhanced relationships, communications, and teaching strategies. The paradigm shift from one adult learning mode to another brought about the cultural change within the school district, the schools, and the individual classrooms. The challenge will be sustaining the momentum and continuing to grow as new scientifically-researched best practices and strategies are released for teaching reading and writing. Recommendations from this study include examining Reading First schools and their job-embedded coaching programs. Reading First is a federal program with money appropriated to states and school systems that qualify with low socioeconomic status and student achievement scores. Further research opportunities are available at middle and high school sites where coaching has been adopted. There are some sites within the United States following the guidelines written for elementary teachers.

Software defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) is a relatively new concept for enterprises to structure their networks throughout sites. This thesis was to find best practices for enterprises wanting to transition their current infrastructure to SD-WAN with multiple factors considered. To accomplish this, results gathered from literature reviews, lab testing and interviews with employees from two different enterprises was made.  What was accomplished from the literature review was an overview from Equity Office’s transition to SD-WAN which gave a positive result, as well as a cost of ownership tests with Talari SD-WAN units by NSS Labs. Lab testing with Talari SD-WAN units and a cloud site from Amazon Web Services resulted in improvements in performance and stability compared to a local traditional setup to the cloud site, especially on multiple simultaneous connections. Lastly, results from interviews provided deep insight on how the enterprises planned the transition, what results were expected as well as gained profits in forms of cost and effectivity.  A definitive best practice which every enterprise should follow could not be made. Instead, best practices were found by factoring in different criteria that are unique for different enterprises. For future work, narrowing down to one methodology with more resources, could help in obtaining more realistic and accurate results. / Mjukvarudefinierade wide area networks (SD-WAN) är ett relativt nytt koncept för företag att strukturera sina nätverk genom sina kontor. Projektets mål var att hitta bästa praxis för företag som vill övergå från sin nuvarande infrastruktur till SD-WAN med hänsyn till flera faktorer. För att uppnå detta samlades resultat in från litteraturstudier, tester med laboration och intervjuer med anställda från två olika företag.  Det som uppnåddes från litteraturstudien var en översikt över Equity Offices övergång till SD-WAN vilket gav ett positivt resultat, samt en överblick av tester på ägandekostnader med Talari SD-WAN enheter som utfördes av NSS Labs. Tester med Talari SD-WAN enheter och en molnuppsättning på Amazon Web Services resulterade i förbättringar i prestanda och stabilitet jämfört med en lokal traditionell uppsättning till molnet, särskilt vid parallella anslutningar. Slutligen gav resultaten från intervjuer en djup inblick i hur företagen planerade övergången, vilka resultat som förväntades samt vinster i form av kostnad och effektivitet.  En slutgiltig bästa praxis som varje företag bör följa kunde inte bestämmas. Istället hittades bästa praxis genom att ta hänsyn till olika kriterier som är unika för olika företag. För framtida arbeten kan man smala ner arbetet till en typ av metodik med mer resurser, för att hjälpa till med att få mer realistiska och korrekta resultat.

Software defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) is a relatively new concept for enterprises to structure their networks throughout sites. This thesis was to find best practices for enterprises wanting to transition their current infrastructure to SD-WAN with multiple factors considered. To accomplish this, results gathered from literature reviews, lab testing and interviews with employees from two different enterprises was made.  What was accomplished from the literature review was an overview from Equity Office’s transition to SD-WAN which gave a positive result, as well as a cost of ownership tests with Talari SD-WAN units by NSS Labs. Lab testing with Talari SD-WAN units and a cloud site from Amazon Web Services resulted in improvements in performance and stability compared to a local traditional setup to the cloud site, especially on multiple simultaneous connections. Lastly, results from interviews provided deep insight on how the enterprises planned the transition, what results were expected as well as gained profits in forms of cost and effectivity.  A definitive best practice which every enterprise should follow could not be made. Instead, best practices were found by factoring in different criteria that are unique for different enterprises. For future work, narrowing down to one methodology with more resources, could help in obtaining more realistic and accurate results. / Mjukvarudefinierade wide area networks (SD-WAN) är ett relativt nytt koncept för företag att strukturera sina nätverk genom sina kontor. Projektets mål var att hitta bästa praxis för företag som vill övergå från sin nuvarande infrastruktur till SD-WAN med hänsyn till flera faktorer. För att uppnå detta samlades resultat in från litteraturstudier, tester med laboration och intervjuer med anställda från två olika företag.  Det som uppnåddes från litteraturstudien var en översikt över Equity Offices övergång till SD-WAN vilket gav ett positivt resultat, samt en överblick av tester på ägandekostnader med Talari SD-WAN enheter som utfördes av NSS Labs. Tester med Talari SD-WAN enheter och en molnuppsättning på Amazon Web Services resulterade i förbättringar i prestanda och stabilitet jämfört med en lokal traditionell uppsättning till molnet, särskilt vid parallella anslutningar. Slutligen gav resultaten från intervjuer en djup inblick i hur företagen planerade övergången, vilka resultat som förväntades samt vinster i form av kostnad och effektivitet.  En slutgiltig bästa praxis som varje företag bör följa kunde inte bestämmas. Istället hittades bästa praxis genom att ta hänsyn till olika kriterier som är unika för olika företag. För framtida arbeten kan man smala ner arbetet till en typ av metodik med mer resurser, för att hjälpa till med att få mer realistiska och korrekta resultat.

One way to understand teaching is to view it as a people process rather than a presentation of knowledge. It follows that the role of an educator often extends beyond the primary subject matter and into the realm of classroom management. With this in mind, our research aimed to capture the various teaching practices, participation patterns, and communication climates that occur in virtual computer science classrooms. We sought to answer the following research questions related to virtual computer science classrooms at our institution: Who participates in virtual computer science classrooms, and is participation proportional to student demographics? Is there any correlation between the use of teaching best practices and student participation? Is there any correlation between communication climate and student participation? To answer these questions, we designed and conducted a mixed-method content analysis study on 14 instructor-provided synchronous video lectures. We created a rubric composed of teaching best practices and supportive and defensive communication behaviors. The resulting design employed ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and quantitative content analysis (QCA) methodologies to produce contextually relevant knowledge. Correlational analysis was conducted using Kendall's tau-b correlational algorithm. Our findings suggest female participation was not proportional to student demographics, and no significant correlations between teaching practices and participation patterns were found. However, several significant correlations between communication climate and participation patterns were identified. Specifically, increased communication behaviors displaying equality were positively correlated with classroom dialogue count, unique female participants, female participation, and female first responses.

This research examines the practices of Title I school principals. The purpose of this research is to examine schools with strong AYP scores to understand the reasons for their success, the teacher's roles, the principal's role, and the process of change initiated by each principal. The schools that have been included in the study are Title I Elementary/Middle Schools in Northern California with at least a 30% Latino population. The researcher was able to develop a working model for school improvement called the "Good School Functional Model" through extensive data analysis. This model identifies the common attributes of these schools that have enabled them to become successful.

Startups indeed play a pivotal role in society as agents of innovation and generators of employment. Despite this, a large proportion of startups fail. As a substantial amount of these temporary project-like companies called startups engage in software development and as application of project management has been correlated with project success, this research exploits a gap in the literature concerned with best practices as it pertains to project management methodologies for software development in startups. Given that a significant number of academic studies have already been conducted in the area of software development practices in startups spanning project management methodologies and software development methodologies, this research applies a strategy of systematic review as along with the application of thematic synthesis is appropriate for ascertaining the current state of knowledge and the search for some consensus. Consequently, this has been deemed to be an appropriate strategy for answering the research question: What are the best practices in applying Project Management Methodologies for software development projects in startups? The scope of the systematic review is the last decade (from 2012 to 2022) and the PRISMA framework has been used to facilitate the identification and screening of records. As a result, 17 studies with varying methods were deemed eligible and of high quality according to the quality assessment guidelines by Garousi et al. The main findings of this study identify three high-order themes for best practices in applying project management methodologies for software development in startups: Agility & Maturity, Empower & Value People, Tool Usage & Support.

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