Program managers frequently put staff training near the top of their lists of ongoing challenges. The mix of diverse, complex training needs in many programs means managers may be responsible for orienting new staff, implementing new administrative procedures, or facilitating steps toward long-term program improvement. The greatest underlying…

Guided pathways reforms can take several years to implement at scale because they require a thoroughgoing redesign of a college's major functions, including: (1) organizing programs into career-focused meta-majors to enhance student recruitment and exploration and program improvement; (2) mapping clear paths to degrees, employment, and further…

A multiple-fatality outdoor education event in New Zealand in 2008 revealed that a 'systems approach' towards managing risks and training staff was widely considered to be normal and 'best practice'. This approach champions audit trails and economic efficiency, and one of its characteristics is the volume of paperwork required. One of the…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? In 2017, the California Department of Education's Expanded Learning Division (after-school and summer programs) took a radically different approach by cultivating the…

Three training programs in the Pittsburgh-based project to design new approaches to training educational R & D personnel focus on the development and conduct of local change programs. Each of the training programs includes work within the training contexts of course work, laboratory exercises or projects, internship experiences, and individualized…

A discussion of the role of bilingual education programs focuses on their function as a district-wide or school-wide reform effort, rather than as a discrete program within a larger system. It is proposed that this approach requires changes in the traditional roles of school personnel and thoughtful attention to how to involve all participants.…

In many school districts, particularly large urban districts, there has been an increase in the number of language minority students and in the linguistic and sociocultural diversity of these students. Historically, programs that served these students tended to operate and be administered separately from the mainstream program. Recent federal…

A project was undertaken by a university to develop in-service staff development programs for 500 part-time faculty members at three community colleges. The university project staff functioned as process consultants, who initially conducted a needs assessment of programs and services desired by faculty members. Subsequent to the assessment, their…

In 1997, 78,644 Alaskans participated in vocational education (VE) in a public secondary school or university. Enrollments in secondary- and postsecondary-level VE were approximately equal. At the secondary level, 57% of vocational students were male. Alaskan natives accounted for only 15% of the total vocational enrollment at the postsecondary…