Leadership is a hot-button issue these days. Reformers depend on it. The public believes that it is what schools need more of. And private sector CEOs think they know exactly what it is and are anxious to share that knowledge with the "poor unwashed masses" of educational leaders. It is not surprising, then, that so many people are…

Professionals who work with youth often have many questions about how to use a Positive Youth Development strategy. Your questions are answered in this Q&A.

In this article, the author discusses several research reports demonstrating the existence of sex differences in cognitive function and language skills. Although dozens of studies published in the past five years have demonstrated dramatic sex differences in autonomic function, the educational literature has not emphasized those studies and their…

Adult piano students (N = 711) from 24 states across the U.S. rated the existence and importance of 31 potential benefits of adult piano study. Benefits selected from existing adult music and leisure-benefit research were organized into three categories: Personal, Skill, and Social/Cultural. The category of Skill Benefits was the most-agreed-upon…

This article grew out of a participatory research project conducted with support of the Robert Bowne Foundation from January 2003 through January 2004. Six young people who had been participants in Forest Hills Community House (FHCH) programs for eight years or longer agreed to be interviewed in depth about experiences that had affected their…

America's Promise Alliance recommends that all sectors of society work together to ensure all young people have a 21st century education in which service-learning and civic involvement are components. This policy/practice brief explores service-learning as a place-based family-strengthening strategy that develops the capacity of youth as a core…

This grounded theory study employed in-depth interviews with nine student/parent dyads from eastern Canada. Youth with disabilities, aged 16 to 21, contributed narratives describing high school transitions. Shared experience that transcends disability categories produced powerful results. Three categories emerged: (1) transition facilitators; (2)…

Recently, researchers and policymakers have begun to question the role of professional education in learning to teach. This inquiry reflects skepticism about the contributions of teacher education, which is, in turn, fueled by popular ideas about the work of teaching: teachers are born not made, or that "real" learning begins once novices arrive…

This paper describes the background to and development of a first year undergraduate law module which has been re-designed to enable the embedding of Personal Development Planning (PDP) within the curriculum, with particular emphasis on career management skills. The pedagogic rationale for the approach adopted is identified and it is then…

This annotated bibliography lists approximately 150 braille books and 300 audiocassettes of books which address coping skills for people in a variety of situations. All items listed are available in the network library collections provided by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress.…

Work in developmental psychiatry and psychology has increasingly focused on how internal representations of early experiences with primary figures of childhood affect relationship formation in later childhood and adulthood. Investigations of the reflective self function, which involves mental states in which individuals become the subject of their…

Earth and its people are at risk. This book empowers anyone to personally deal with being at risk, with destructive personal stress, and environmental trauma. It shows how to let nature place its wisdom into one's thinking and overcome society's separation from nature. It lets nature itself teach us how it works and how to participate in its…

A study examined the extent to which 1994-95 members of the West Virginia chapter of Vocational Industrial Clubs of America (VICA) participated in VICA personal development activities. The study population consisted of all VICA members in West Virginia, and the study sample consisted of all 156 VICA members who attended the annual West Virginia…

Adolescent struggle is about the forces which shape the self and direct the search for identity. It examines the factors which incline young people toward self-centeredness, irrationality and faulty decision-making. Section 1 of the book deals with the adolescent self and two of the most important determinants of adolescent behavior: egocentrism…

The advance of science and technology, the rise of mass consumerism, the deterioration of families, and other factors have enormous implications for career counseling. This digest outlines a constructivist career counseling perspective. This perspective is based on the following concepts: there are multiple realities and no single "God's…