Getting a head start on college coursework in high school has become an even more important goal for high school students in recent years, due in part to the rising costs of obtaining traditional four-year college degrees coupled with the disruptions in learning for high school and college students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever,…

The Policy Practice in Field Initiative was created to seed innovation and develop new models for an integrated approach to enhance the policy skill set of all social work students regardless of specialization. Funds provided to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) are regranted to schools and programs of social work for field placement and…

The Bradley PDS Partnership, about which we report in this article, was established in 1995 to promote academic and professional development for P-12 students, pre-professionals, practitioners, and professors. For twenty years, the partnership has been generously funded by the William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee. In a grant…

For many years, schools of social work have engaged in partnerships, especially with public child welfare agencies, to prepare a competent and professional child welfare workforce through the mechanism of Title IV-E training. In 2008 the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) established an additional resource for preparing students in…

Higher education institutions are well positioned to provide students with meaningful educational opportunities, to prepare them for lives of impact and service to their communities by investing their acquired knowledge to address critical societal needs. Furthermore, a sound college education is particularly important to students' personal,…

This report presents baseline and process study findings of an evaluation of the Urban Alliance high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, and Chicago. The report, which focuses on the program's…

One of the goals of international education is to help students learn about different regions of the world. Such education is inherently multidisciplinary, including geographical and historical perspectives to put the places and regions in spatial, ecological, and temporal context. A wide variety of systematic disciplines also can be involved in…

Information literacy instruction is integrated into the distance education program in library and information science (LEEP) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This article describes the LEEP program and the library services provided to its students. Published research on LEEP and related topics in librarianship is reviewed.…

Plugging in to L.I.T.E.S. project (Leaders in Technology Enhanced Schools--a previously funded Technology Innovation Challenge grant project) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) has been very successful in its attempts to enhance the technology integration skills of teacher education students, and to improve the capabilities of our…

Describes the Experience Based Career Education (EBCE) concept and history briefly, and discusses EBCE in Decatur, Joliet, and Sycamore (Illinois) with comments of support from students, the community, parents, and staff. (TA)

This is a collection of reports on innovative practices in student teaching programs. The label "innovative" is justified on the basis of the investigation's scope. Identification of innovative student teaching practices was accomplished by contacting chief state school officers, chairmen and members of state commissions on teacher…

Northwestern University's Archeological Program has developed a wide range of educational programs which feature direct student (junior high through Ph.D. candidates and out of school adults) involvement in the field. (JC)

The cooperative program used at Sycamore High School, Sycamore, Illinois, for 24 years has been integrated with career education to provide student experience in many occupations in a cluster and to permit progression toward a specific occupation and attain salable skills. Grades 9-12 curriculum is based on a series of career orientation and…

Summaries are presented of 15 case studies conducted at Illinois Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) regions to determine the kind of credentialing mechanisms that exist for awarding academic credit or some other record of achievement to those eligible participants who complete CETA training programs. Introductory material describes…

A survey instrument was developed to obtain baseline data about early childhood education (ECE) programs within the public and nonpublic schools of Illinois. Information gathered concerned (1) perceptions of elementary school officials about the relative demand for and supply of ECE programs and services; (2) numbers and kinds of ECE programs and…