Early childhood is a crucial stage in a child's life, and aspects of the environment in the physical, social-emotional, cognitive, and health and safety domains all play important roles in shaping children's development during these early years. Having a valid and reliable measure of the quality of these aspects of children's care settings is…

Based on Laura Colker, Derry Koralek, and Diane Trister Dodge's classic book, originally published by NAEYC in 1993, High-Quality Early Childhood Programs offers detailed descriptions of what one should see in high-quality programs (and why) to provide a strong foundation of child development knowledge and principles translated into practice.…

One of the greatest challenges in education today is to adapt and respond to a linguistically and culturally diverse world, and to combat social disintegration and discrimination. Participatory and collaborative action research represents an empowering and emancipatory approach to this challenge because the "target groups" become…

"Review of Adult Learning and Literacy: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice, Volume 7" is the newest volume in a series of annual publications of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) that address major issues, the latest research, and the best practices in the field of adult literacy and…

This volume contains 17 articles on the emergence and potential of "Quality Improvement" (QI) efforts in higher education. Quality Improvement is defined as continuous improvement of processes in a cycle of plan (administration of instructional processes), do/check (assess), act (on the assessment and then continue to), plan-do-check-act. The…

Arguing that students' success almost always depends upon their mastery of literacy during the fundamental prekindergarten through Grade 3 years, this text draws upon 20 years of research to prove the link between effective literacy programs and instructional leadership. This book examines the foundation of highly effective literacy programs in…

What constitutes quality in early childhood settings, and how can it best be measured with today's widely used tools and promising new approaches? Find authoritative answers in this book, a must-have for high-level administrators and policymakers as more and more states adopt early childhood Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. The most…

This document contains 11 papers on researching service learning through a multidisciplinary lens. The following papers are included: "Introduction" (Shelley H. Billig, Andrew Furco); "Stretching to Meet the Challenge: Improving the Quality of Research to Improve the Quality of Service-Learning" (Janet Eyler);…

This book describes the steps and tools of Total Quality Management (TQM) and their use in the academic units of colleges and universities for Total Quality Improvement (TQI), illustrated by a case study from the School of Arts & Sciences at a state university. Section 1 explains how to: (1) identify problems contributing to non-value-added…

This text introduces the concepts of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and shows how they can be used in the classroom. A quality classroom is defined as one in which everyone in the class knows the objectives of the class and adopts a quality philosophy to continuously improve the work done to meet those objectives. The general principles and…

Traditional and nontraditional education in Taiwan are considered, based on interviews with educators and scholars in Taiwan, observations, and research materials. To provide a picture of the evolution of academe in the Chinese-Taiwan setting, attention is directed to philosophy, history, academic ethics and excellence, methodology, and policy…