This paper focuses on engaging and enabling educators to play new roles and take new leadership in the paradigm shift between traditional and competency-based education: a system of learning designed to ensure that all learners are prepared with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to be successful lifelong learners. The paper re-envisions…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education around the world and created extraordinary new challenges for students, families, educators, and policymakers. Its impacts on students' learning and well-being are far reaching, though not yet fully understood. However, early evidence indicates disproportionate effects on students with disabilities, a…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Student Voice." Contents include: (1) Steps for Helping Students Become…

This guide is intended to stimulate professional reflection, dialogue and debate about mathematics and how to improve it. It draws together themes, features and characteristics of effective improvement in mathematics and descriptions of good practice. It offers a reference point for staff and teachers who are working together to improve…

This enlightening handbook offers current, international perspectives on the conditions in communities, contemporary practices in schooling, relevant research on teaching and learning, and implications for the future of education. It contains diverse conceptual frameworks for analyzing existing issues in education, including but not limited to…

In this article, the author states his belief that community based learning among adults can be a powerful force for encouraging personal development and for strengthening democracy in this multicultural, globally interdependent, battered world. To do so, however, it needs to pervade all the curricula, degree programs, learning contracts, and…

Based on suggestions of participants at the second annual Instructional Methods Forum held in June 1989, the monograph considers cognitive-based approaches to teaching mathematics to students with learning problems and the implications for the design of media and materials. It discusses characteristics of successful cognitive approaches and the…

"The Achiever" is published monthly during the school year for parents and community leaders. Each issue contains news and information about school improvement in the United States. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) President Establishes National Advisory Panel on Math: Experts to Advise on "Best Available…

Promoting community awareness and understanding of the issues encompassed within the teaching and learning of school mathematics, and involving parents in their children's mathematics education are the first steps toward the goal that every child must gain mathematical power. This document helps to answer some of the most frequent questions that…

This curriculum guide is composed of 16 lesson plans about terminology and concepts relevant to the four major methods of handling solid waste problems: (1) reuse; (2) recycling; (3) conversion of waste to energy ; and (4) landfilling. Games, investigations, a play, projects, a slide presentation, and skits are some of the teaching techniques…

This volume makes two important contributions: First, it provides a framework grounded in theory and best professional practice that middle and high school teachers, their students, and community partners can use to design, implement, and evaluate service-learning projects that address authentic community needs. Second, it demonstrates ways…

Ways teachers have used insects in and out of the classroom to help nurture children's fascination are discussed. Projects for elementary, secondary, and college classes are described. (CW)

Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Enlightened Public Policy and includes: (1) Texas Education Policy: Prospects for 2009 (Albert Cortez); (2) Bilingual Education in…

The overall objective of the "Making Changes" program, which is the subject of this facilitator handbook, is to help immigrant women in Canada establish more meaningful lives, specifically in terms of employment. After briefly describing the content of the program (career planning, information sharing and getting, job search skills, the…

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterized by difficulty in learning to read. Some dyslexics also may have difficulty learning to write, to spell, and to speak or work with numbers. Some researchers estimate that as many as 15 percent of American students may be classified as dyslexic. Children with dyslexia are not all…