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This research describes a 54-month National Science Foundation-supported collaboration, the Thinking Mathematics Project, between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) of the University of Pittsburgh wherein expert teachers and cognitive researchers sought to codify the best of clinical and research knowledge on student learning and instruction for mathematics in the early grades. The authors draw on their documentation of the development of the collaboration between these two organizations and the teachers and researchers involved to provide highlights of participants’ reflections of the collaborative experience. Lessons about what works and what doesn’t when teachers and researchers attempt to build a common learning community are described.

Adaptive capacity, considered one of the essential organizational capacities for enabling nonprofits to achieve their missions, requires nonprofits to act as learning organizations and to use evaluation as a tool to enhance organizational learning and performance. Nonprofits at the start-up or growth phase face a particular set of challenges in maintaining their adaptive capacity. A theoretical framework for assessing a nonprofit's organizational readiness to improve its adaptive capacity was developed and applied to 10 emerging social change nonprofits in Israel. The results demonstrate the utility of the conceptual framework while providing insight into the day-to-day realities of organizational life that help to shape the adaptive capacity of the 10 nonprofits in the sample. Key issues relating to the adaptive capacity of the nonprofits and their particular stage of organizational development also are raised.

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