ASCD, formerly known as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, is an education non-profit organization founded in 1943. It has more than 125,000 members from more than 128 countries, including superintendents, principals, teachers, professors of education, and other educators. [1] The ASCD community also includes affiliate organizations Student Chapters. [2]
While ASCD was initially founded with a focus on curriculum and supervision, the organization now provides professional development, publishing, and event experiences focusing on a broad range of topics for educators. [3]
ASCD formed when the National Education Association's Society for Curriculum Study and Department of Supervisors and Directors of Instruction merged in 1943. ASCD became totally independent of the NEA in 1972. [4]
In 2023 ASCD merged with ISTE to form the largest education non-profit organization focused on supporting educators in designing high-quality learning experiences for all students. The merger brings together the instructional expertise of ASCD with the innovation expertise of ISTE. The merged organization is led by Richard Culatta, who previously served as the Chief Innovation Officer for the State of Rhode Island and Executive Director at the US Department of Education.
ASCD+ISTE is governed by a Board of Directors, which includes the CEO. The board is chaired by co-presidents (one from each of the legacy ASCD and legacy ISTE boards).
Educational Leadership (EL) magazine is ASCD's flagship publication, with a circulation of 135,000. EL provides information about teaching and learning, new ideas and practices relevant to practicing educators, and the latest trends and issues affecting prekindergarten through higher education. EL is published eight times each year, September through May, with a combined issue in December/January. [5]
In March 2007, ASCD launched its Whole Child Initiative to ensure all children are healthy, safe, engaged in learning, supported by caring adults, and academically challenged. [6] The public-engagement and advocacy campaign encourages schools and communities to work together so that each student has access to a challenging curriculum in a healthy and supportive environment. [7] ASCD contends that "current educational practice and policy focus overwhelmingly on academic achievement. This achievement, however, is but one element of student learning and development and only a part of any complete system of educational accountability." [8] Partner organizations, such as the American School Health Association, Developmental Studies Center, and the National School Boards Association, have signed on in support of the initiative. [9] Other key initiatives include Differentiated instruction, Understanding by Design, and What Works in Schools. [10]
ASCD offers four main services; events, publishing, professional learning, and membership. In 2024 ASCD announced that its flagship Annual Conference would be co-located with the ISTE annual conference (ISTELive) beginning in San Antonio in 2025.
In education, Response to Intervention is an academic approach used to provide early, systematic, and appropriately intensive supplemental instruction and support to children who are at risk of or currently performing below grade or age level standards. However, to better reflect the transition toward a more comprehensive approach to intervention, there has been a shift in recent years from the terminology referring to RTI to MTSS, which stands for "multi-tiered system of supports". MTSS represents the latest intervention framework that is being implemented to systematically meet the wider needs which influence student learning and performance.
Understanding by Design, or UbD, is an educational theory for curriculum design of a school subject, where planners look at the desired outcomes at the end of the study in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction. UbD is an example of backward design, the practice of looking at the outcomes first, and focuses on teaching to achieve understanding. It is advocated by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (1950-2015) in their Understanding by Design (1998), published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Understanding by Design and UbD are registered trademarks of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
Curriculum mapping is a procedure for reviewing the operational curriculum as it is entered into an electronic database at any education setting. It is based largely on the work of Heidi Hayes Jacobs in Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 and Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping. Schools are using curriculum templates that display key components of the curriculum: content, skills, assessments, and essential questions.
The College of Education is the undergraduate and graduate education school of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was founded in 1905 and took on its current name in 1918 after previously being known as the School of Education. The college offers undergraduate, graduate, and online programs in areas including elementary education, early childhood education, special education, and Educational Organization and Leadership. It began with six departments; three of them merged and formed the largest department in the college. All departments offer masters and doctoral degrees. However, only two departments offer undergraduate degree programs: Special Education and Curriculum & Instruction. The college also offers 16 online programs. Students seeking an undergraduate degree in the college must meet the minimum graduation requirement set forth by the university. To obtain a certification, students must also meet the requirements of the Council on Teacher Education, a professional educational administration at the University of Illinois. The total enrollment is 1,361 students as of 2015.
Youth and Educators Succeeding, formerly known as Generation YES, was a U.S. based non-profit organization that works with schools around the world to empower underserved students and ensure that technology investments in education are both cost effective and meaningful. Dr. Dennis Harper was the founder and CEO from 1996 to 2020; upon his retirement, Adam F.C. Fletcher succeeded him. YES programs focused on student centered, project-based learning "experiences that impact student's lives and increase student involvement in school and community through the use of technology." In addition, research showed "all YES programs improved the use of technology in the school as a whole."
Art Education in the United States refers to the practice of teaching art in American public schools. Before the democratization of education, particularly as promoted by educational philosopher John Dewey, apprenticeship was the traditional route for attaining an education in art. Alongside John Dewey, Elliot Eisner was a leading advocate for the inclusion of art in modern curriculum. Since the first introduction of art in public schooling in 1821, art education in the United States has faced many changes and many stages of growth.
Janet Hale is an American educational consultant / trainer and national staff development specialist in Curriculum Mapping, Standards Literacy, and Documenting Learning who provides consulting, coaching, and professional learning opportunities.
Susan Neuman is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker in early childhood and literacy development. In 2013, she became Professor of Early Childhood and Literacy Education, and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
Differentiated instruction and assessment, also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation, is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing all students within their diverse classroom community of learners a range of different avenues for understanding new information in terms of: acquiring content; processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in their ability. Differentiated instruction means using different tools, content, and due process in order to successfully reach all individuals. Differentiated instruction, according to Carol Ann Tomlinson, is the process of "ensuring that what a student learns, how he or she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he or she has learned is a match for that student's readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning." According to Boelens et al. (2018), differentiation can be on two different levels: the administration level and the classroom level. The administration level takes the socioeconomic status and gender of students into consideration. At the classroom level, differentiation revolves around content, processing, product, and effects. On the content level, teachers adapt what they are teaching to meet the needs of students. This can mean making content more challenging or simplified for students based on their levels. The process of learning can be differentiated as well. Teachers may choose to teach individually at a time, assign problems to small groups, partners or the whole group depending on the needs of the students. By differentiating product, teachers decide how students will present what they have learned. This may take the form of videos, graphic organizers, photo presentations, writing, and oral presentations. All these take place in a safe classroom environment where students feel respected and valued—effects.
Good Shepherd Cathedral School (GSCS) is a Filipino Catholic school located at the corner of Omega Avenue and Rado Street in West Fairview, Quezon City, Philippines. It is a private sectarian school situated at the back of the Cathedral Shrine and Parish of the Good Shepherd, the seat of the Bishop of Novaliches. GSCS is a member-school of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Novaliches Educational System (RCBNES), the Manila Ecclesiastical Province School Systems Association (MaPSA), the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), and of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PAASCU).
Global education is a mental development program that seeks to improve global human development based on the understanding of global dynamics, through the various sectors of human development delivery. In formal education, as a mode of human development delivery, it is integrated into formal educational programs, as an advanced program where global dimensions to local problems are appreciated through interconnectivity. Its first phase began as an undertaking to restructure education and society in the 1960s and 1970s, through the initiatives of educationalists, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations. The program evolves with the internet, and is in its virtual interconnectivity phase, through social media and other global public spheres. This global approach to mental development, seeks to fix the failing curriculum-based global education program that is: stuck in limited subject knowledge, based on theories that have failed the world ;hinged on memorization without visual exposure to knowledge development resources and global culture, limited by access to human development resources. Instead, the program seeks to improve the global mental resources pool through the appreciation of global dynamics and local perspectives on issues. This is through alternative motivations for global human development, and alternative global futures hinged on interconnectivity.
In education, affect is broadly defined as the attitudes, emotions, and values present in an educational environment. The two main types of affect are professional affect and student affect. Professional affect refers to the emotions and values presented by the teacher which are picked up by the student, while student affect refers to the attitudes, interests, and values acquired in the educational environment. While there is the possibility of overlap between student and professional affect, the terms are rarely used interchangeably by educational professionals, with student affect being reserved primarily for use to describe developmental activities present in a school which are not presented by the teacher.
Robert J. Garmston is an educator, author, and cognitive theorist. He is Professor Emeritus, School of Education, at California State University, Sacramento. In 2014 he is the director of Facilitation Associates, an educational consulting firm specializing in leadership, learning, and organizational development.
Jon (Jonathan) Bergmann is a chemistry teacher and one of the developers of the "flipped classroom" model of teaching along with fellow chemistry teacher Aaron Sams. Although already noted for his teaching, Bergmann decided to "flip" what students did in his classes, watching video lectures at home and doing exercises (homework) in class under supervision. He and Sams not only found that grades went up, they also found time for other types of activities, which Bergmann states is more important than the videos. Bergmann has since become the lead technology facilitator for a school in Illinois, and has worked to promote the models speaking at schools, universities and more both in the United States and abroad. He currently teaches science at a high school in suburban Houston Texas.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on accelerating innovation in education through the smart use of technology in education. ISTE provides a variety of services to support professional learning for educators and education leaders, including ISTELive—an ed tech event, the ISTE Standards for learning, teaching and leading with technology, and ISTE Certification. ISTE also provides a suite of professional learning resources, including webinars, online courses, consulting services, books, and peer-reviewed journals and publications.
21st century skills comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions identified as requirements for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of an international movement focusing on the skills required for students to prepare for workplace success in a rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork, which differ from traditional academic skills as these are not content knowledge-based.
Data-driven instruction is an educational approach that relies on information to inform teaching and learning. The idea refers to a method teachers use to improve instruction by looking at the information they have about their students. It takes place within the classroom, compared to data-driven decision making. Data-driven instruction works on two levels. One, it provides teachers the ability to be more responsive to students’ needs, and two, it allows students to be in charge of their own learning. Data-driven instruction can be understood through examination of its history, how it is used in the classroom, its attributes, and examples from teachers using this process.
Richard E. Culatta is the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and ASCD. Prior to holding this position, he was the chief innovation officer for the state of Rhode Island and the director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education (2013-2015).
Educational management refers to the administration of the education system in which a group combines human and material resources to supervise, plan, strategise, and implement structures to execute an education system. Education is the equipping of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, habits, and attitudes with learning experiences. The education system is an ecosystem of professionals in educational institutions, such as government ministries, unions, statutory boards, agencies, and schools. The education system consists of political heads, principals, teaching staff, non-teaching staff, administrative personnel and other educational professionals working together to enrich and enhance. At all levels of the educational ecosystem, management is required; management involves the planning, organising, implementation, review, evaluation, and integration of an institution. Research in educational management should explore the dynamic interplay among educational leaders, their followers, and the broader community to enhance the quality of teaching and learning outcomes.
Early childhood education in the United States relates to the teaching of children from birth up to the age of eight. The education services are delivered via preschools and kindergartens.