Choosing the proper content for high school physics courses is not an easy task for the teacher or the school. Depth and breadth of coverage, student interests and background and teacher strengths may by considered. This paper provides help for teachers in choosing course content. Topics are: (1) scope of physics; (2) list of seven basic…

This instructional task/competency package is designed to help teachers and administrators in developing competency-based instructional materials for an energy and power course. Part 1 contains a description of the industrial arts program and a course description, instructional task/competency list, and content outline for energy and power. The…

Intended to assist district and school curriculum developers, this report offers clarification of the relationships among 12 state goals of education using information obtained through a survey of Department of Education staff and representatives of professional associations. Defined as the goals of education are the areas of communication skills,…

Written from the perspective of a textbook editor, this paper reviews the limitations on curricular reform in mathematics. In the first section, an argument is presented that the style and manner of the presentation of educational materials are more important than the content presented. This section also raises objections to the current push to…

This report discusses the structures, procedures, outcomes, and evaluation of the Tier One Project (TOP), which was conducted at Los Medanos College from July 1981 to February 1983 to develop general education courses embodying humanities concerns. Background to the project is provided first, delineating TOP's objectives of examining general…

It is proposed that linguistic oral content, or metalinguistics, be included in the curriculum of primary school francophone children. This content is not included in the functionally oriented official curriculum. The linguistic content proposed consists of a number of formal variants corresponding to non-formal stylistic markers and respecting…

This examination of high schools in Massachusetts raises questions about the meaning of the high school diploma and the role, if any, of state policymakers in influencing its meaning. The study shows: (1) students with different characteristics (e.g., male, female, white, minority) and from different kinds of communities and with different…

A project was conducted at the Community College of Luzerne County (Pennsylvania) to develop, in cooperation with area vocational-technical schools, the first year of a competency-based curriculum in computer-integrated manufacturing. Existing programs were reviewed and private sector input was sought in developing the curriculum and identifying…

To analyze high school students' access to the forms and content of knowledge, the author used nonparticipant ethnographic research in four midwestern high schools to study how the pattern of knowledge control in the classroom varies in different administrative contexts. Through observation of social studies classrooms and interviews with…

To describe the development of an experiential learning program for mass communication students, this report presents the results of a year-long experiment designed to help students gain in professionalism by both managing a cable channel and producing programs for it. The first section of the report describes the experiment, which was the result…

A project was conducted at Wenatchee Valley College (Washington) to update the curriculum for the industrial refrigeration technician course. First, resource groups and information networks were contacted in order to obtain a wide range of available resources. In addition, contractors, manufacturers, and government agencies that serve the Pacific…

The major purpose of this study was to provide a current, descriptive data base regarding teacher education in Illinois. A two-part survey was conducted to collect data. The first part required administrators of teacher preparation programs to identify the number and types of distinct teacher preparation curricula at their respective institutions.…

This paper describes one college's individualized-instruction approach to its freshman composition courses and offers suggestions for the implementation of individualized instruction in other freshman composition programs. The paper stresses that the courses should be competency based and self-paced. Other considerations that are important include…

An instructional development project at the University of Kansas focused upon two major objectives: (1) to develop teaching strategies to introduce engineering students and faculty to literature searching on computerized data bases, and (2) to help students develop effective on-line search strategies. A faculty workshop and an undergraduate…

A parenting curriculum need not be confined to the high school's home economics or social studies departments. When students are made aware that books are written for children who cannot yet read, there is no problem eliciting justifications for a unit on children's literature in the high school English class, a unit that compares the…