Background: This paper provides insights into 'Policy to Research' (P2R) Fellowships and related programmes within the 'relationship' model of academic-policy engagement, which provide structured opportunities for policy officials to interact with academic researchers. Aims and objectives: Information is provided on P2R Fellowship and similar…

The world needs great individual educational changemakers capable of identifying problems and creating bold, scalable solutions. But the world also needs Dream Teams--groups of talented administrators, teachers, staff, students, and community members who are passionate about making things better for kids, believe that school-based change is the…

The focus of this article is teacher professional development. The article examines literature related to teacher professional development and methods of measuring its impact. In order to ground the discussion, the article focuses on a case study that captures the perspectives of Ontario secondary school teachers and their administrators as they…

Teacher education programmes within Canada are markedly different in structure and duration across the provinces, which affects programme delivery for teacher candidates and their opportunities for clinical practice. This paper provides a brief overview of Canadian pre-service teacher education, a summary of new teacher induction and mentoring…

Presents action-theoretical approach to evaluation of career development programs based on constructionist epistemology. Propositions from action-theoretical perspective center around career and action as related, interpretative constructs. Propositions give rise to implications for evaluation of career programs that address ongoing nature of…

On April 1, 1983, thirteen "enthusiastic, daring, creative and resourceful" (Landstrom, 1993, p. 113) Canadian distance educators who were attending an international conference on telecourses gathered in a hotel room in Washington DC to socialize. They left that evening with a dream: a Canadian distance education association. Now, after…

A brief review shows several suggested ways in which cultural historical activity theory has proved valuable to technology supported learning environments. Three of our own design cases are then described (evaluating a peer to peer interface for learning objects, designing an on-line school, and rethinking a public science centre). These are…

Each of the four issues of this newsletter published in 1993 consists of one article dealing with a particular policy debate. Number 1, "Canadian Special Education Policies: Children with Learning Disabilities in a Bilingual and Multicultural Society" (Linda S. Siegel and Judith Wiener), discusses social and cultural factors affecting…

The Saanich Elementary Internship Program (SEIP), a team effort between the University of Victoria (British Columbia) faculty of education and the Saanich School District, was investigated for the purpose of improving the preparation of elementary school teachers. The Saanich School District was primarily responsible for selection and placement of…

Recognizing the necessity of cooperation between human service organizations and schools in dealing with child abuse, a collaborative teacher inservice model has been developed in Calgary, Canada. In addition to staff development mechanisms in the Calgary school districts, the University of Calgary has established an inservice project on treatment…

A multimethod evaluation of a major Canadian strategic grant program with surveys of 74 funded projects, 4 case studies, and interviews with researchers and grant application staff reveals the favorable effects of partnerships between research and practice on research and dissemination strategies in spite of ideological and pragmatic constraints.…

The design and evaluation of a rating scale for program evaluation in problem-based medical curricula are described. The design process was guided by a theory of how students learn in problem-based learning as modeled by W. H. Gijselaers and H. G. Schmidt (1988). The rating scale was used in an evaluation of a new problem-based, community-oriented…

Analyzes how Canadian immersion education has developed from its origins to the present in terms of a cycle guided by the interplay between theory and classroom practice of second- language acquisition. Johnson responds by questioning the extent to which bilingual education theory and practices are universal or context specific. (38 references)…

This book, which is intended primarily for instructional development specialists, academic leaders, and faculty members in all types of postsecondary institutions, explains what skills and competencies students need to succeed in today's workplace and details how colleges and universities can strengthen the curriculum to cultivate those skills in…

Selected papers from the conference address four priorities in second language teaching: teacher education; instruction; curriculum; and testing. Papers include: "Listening Processes and Authentic Texts" (Donna Reseigh Long); "Directory of Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Programs in the United States: A Preliminary Report"…