Creating continuously improving education systems could be the antidote to one-off education reforms that come and go with little to show for the effort. What distinguishes continuous improvement from other reform strategies is its focus on the underlying architecture of the system that is producing undesirable outcomes (e.g., low graduation…

Data literacy is recognized as a critically important skill in today's society, but thinking with and about data is often ignored in K-12 curricula. The Thinking With Data (TWD) project advocates that data literacy is a skill that should be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner. This article provides an overview of the TWD curriculum for middle…

This article explores the importance of maintaining case records and draws implications for the field of educational administration. The Center for Advancing Principalship EXcellence (APEX Center) receives case records from member principals and uses them to report on how specific types of problems are dealt with in practice. (MT)

Discusses "Use of Information," the fourth stage in the Big Six Skills information problem-solving process. The focus is on the first component of this stage, i.e., to engage (read, hear, view) information in a source. Suggests strategies for helping student learn effective use of information skills and addresses recognizing relevance.…

One of the aims of the Documentation and Technical Assistance (DTA) Project is to apply educational information that has been utilized for problem solving in one organization to other settings with their own unique characteristics. Within the staff of the DTA project, the position of Technical Assistance-Documentation Linker (TA-Doc Linker) was…

Guidelines to facilitate the assessment and development of educational leadership decision-making skills are presented in this paper. Included are a review of traditional and contemporary concepts of the decision-making process, identification of appropriate techniques, and an analysis of four contemporary decision-making models by Thompson,…

A model for enhancing the local capacity of urban schools for solving problems by restructuring school settings is the subject of this paper. In identifying the strength and weaknesses of such a concept, the paper reviews data from nine sites studied by the Documentation and Technical Assistance (DTA) project for their applicability to other…

Social-matching problems were verbally presented to children either with or without concrete models. In each condition, information was provided which was sufficient, superfluous, or irrelevant. Problems containing only irrelevant information were the most difficult, although models enhanced the performance of younger children but depressed the…

Discussion of the parents' role in homework highlights use of the Big6 Skills to focus on information literacy and information problem-solving processes rather than focusing on having parents help with the actual subject area content. The emphasis is on having parents act as guides and helpers rather than as teachers. (LRW)

A seven-step program is described for allowing students to try their hand at solving problems of the future. Goals of the program are to encourage students to think more creatively, increase their research and communication skills, and develop problem solving skills. (TE)

The Documentation and Technical Assistance Project (DTA) was created, in part, to test a premise related to educational problem-solving. It was hypothesized that knowledge gained through on-site documentation of school level problem solving practices could be transformed for utilization (linkage) by other schools and communities to improve the…

This article describes the factors to which the classroom teacher needs to attend to enhance the mathematical problem-solving abilities of students. Emphasis is placed upon the means necessary to develop the attribute of being a problem solver, rather than focusing on the goal of becoming a problem solver. (JJK)

One of the original premises of the Documentation and Technical Assistance Project (DTA) was that the ideal school organization manifests self renewal and adaptability. This conception of organization has been sharpened through the years by the Oakland, California, branch of the DTA. In this paper, the aspects of self renewal and adaptability…

The booklet focuses on the use of the logical inductive strategy to teach problem solving skills to mildly retarded learners. An introductory section examines three research studies on interventions in the area of problem solving with the retarded learner and concludes, among other things, that mainstreaming has underscored the need for this…

This paper describes the Florida Linkage System (FLS), which was designed to help schools throughout the state improve their problem-solving processes and knowledge utilization. While the system's goals are listed and a model for its linkage strategy is outlined, the major portion of the report discusses three findings about the linkage strategy…