A systems model offers an orderly way of identifying and evaluating the complex components and relationships that are present in special education systems. When applied to national or local systems of special education, it is possible to derive convenient profiles of their strengths and weaknesses, and thus to generate future improvements. As well…

A carefully planned inservice education system should contain the following components: (1) Introduction: Committee Involvement. The system should be developed by a committee representative of the various levels of personnel who participate in the program and selected by prospective participants. (2) Philosophy. The inservice program should be…

The Collier Country (Florida) Sheriff's Office has initiated a voluntary career development program for law enforcement and corrections officers holding ranks of lieutenant and below. The career development program is implemented through a systems approach that integrates career planning and individual assessment with performance evaluation,…

Most community colleges are involved in some sort of staff development program and are also undergoing constant change involving restructuring, rightsizing, or developing new missions and objectives. In general, the more institutionalized and integrated a staff development program is, the more effective the organization will be. Organizations are…

This paper presents an overview of the evolution of the Yale University Child Study Center's School Development Program (SDP) since its implementation in New Haven, Connecticut in 1968. The needs of inner city school children are discussed, and results of parent and staff surveys are presented. A critique of alternative school improvement…

The Early Childhood Prevention Project (ECP) is an innovative effort to integrate psychosocial and educational approaches for promoting children's healthy development in elementary school. ECP takes a holistic approach to the prevention of academic and psychosocial problems and the promotion of students' educational and interpersonal development.…

The Family, Infant and Preschool Program (FIPP) is an outreach unit of Western Carolina Center located in Morganton, North Carolina. Using a needs-based, social support approach, it provides and mediates child- and family-level resources and services for approximately 300 families of handicapepd and at-risk children, 0-6 years old. The conceptual…

The intent of this paper is to examine the issues, problems, implications, rationale, and basic assumptions behind the reexamination of the need for a generally accepted national policy for vocational education. The paper is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 establishes a framework to use in dealing with the main issues. The second chapter…

This document contains three papers from a symposium on designing effective human resource development (HRD) programs that was conducted as part of a conference on HRD. "Leveraging System Factors for Increased Training Effectiveness" (David Ripley) is a conceptual paper that critiques current training design models and the lack of…

A model is proposed for developing and implementing a community-based lifelong learning resources system. The model, which is based on systems theory, features the following sequence of activities: identifying all the learning resources in a community, incorporating information about these resources into a database, establishing a mechanism for…

Reports analyzing vocational-technical education (VTE) in individual member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) were reviewed to identify changes in the role of VTE in the context of technological and structural change, economic crisis, and uncertainty. Major transformations in VTE affecting its organization,…