Conducted in an urban alternative education program for adolescents ages 17-21, this study provides an overview of a professional development program that sought to support teachers in developing unit plans that incorporated backwards design principles and culturally relevant and sustaining instruction. The authors offer a qualitative thematic…

Over the past two decades, two heavily funded initiatives of the Federal government of Australia have been founded on two very different and seemingly conflicting (if not antithetical) visions of education. The first, the Australian Values Education Program (AVEP, 2003-2010) enshrines what may be called an 'embedded values' vision of education;…

A practicum was developed and implemented to address developmental and intellectual delays in primary students in a Georgia elementary school. The program's need resulted from the identification of 18 to 21 percent of the kindergarten and first-grade level students as developmentally delayed or academically unprepared for their grade placement.…

The programs described illustrate innovative ways in which six institutions help students develop a sense of intellectual connection, focus, and achievement through their undergraduate majors. Examples are Hollins College (creating a learning community within the philosophy major); New School for Social Research (students connect learning through…

The Responsive Model program assumes that the school environment should be designed to respond to the learner, and that school activities should be autotelic, or self-rewarding, not dependent upon rewards or punishment unrelated to the activity. Developmental theory, certain ideas of operant conditioning, and flexible learning sequences are used…