Bob Uecker, the Milwaukee Brewers' quipping radio broadcaster, makes his brief and lackluster career as a major league catcher the subject of much of his humor. About catching the knuckleball, Uecker famously said, "I always thought the knuckleball was the easiest pitch to catch." Of course, there is an even better way to catch a knuckleball, and…

In the tight budget atmosphere of recent years, schools may have chosen to do without a dean of faculty or, at best, to double- hat another middle manager with this responsibility. This is a mistake. That all private schools do not have a dedicated dean of faculty suggests a lack of emphasis on the very component of the school--the faculty--that…

Student affairs is a relatively new profession and has changed in significant ways in response to new developments in higher education, innovations in practice, new conceptual paradigms, and changing economic and political conditions. As a result there is much debate about the core mission and purpose of student affairs and whether it is possible…

Chinese homeroom teachers' performance of professional school counselor activities was explored. A total of 109 homeroom teachers in Beijing and Harbin, China reported their performance of 68 different school counseling activities as part of their regular actions as a homeroom teacher. Results found that on average homeroom teachers performed a…

This qualitative study explores the meanings and possible merits of introducing competence profiles for enhancing professional development in the environmental education sector in the Netherlands. It presents the three most important environmental education jobs and their underlying competencies alongside their core professional challenges, as…

Response to intervention is a school reform movement embracing the academic and behavioral needs of all students, including those with gifts and talents. With the implementation of response to intervention in schools across the country, education is in the midst of a significant systems change that is affecting the roles of the school…

The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the role of the public school superintendent, which some researchers claim is one of the most complex leadership positions seen today. The challenges of the superintendency may be contributing to a great number of professionals leaving the field, and a rate of turnover that some…

In this article, the authors argue that the relevance of student affairs depends on the will to redefine the mission, structures, and practices to provide the leadership that institutions require. They begin with an overview of challenges to higher education and student affairs, examine the implications of those challenges for student affairs, and…

Adolescents who receive current, accurate, reliable, and balanced sexual-health information are more likely to express healthier sexual attitudes and engage in healthier sexual behaviors than adolescents receiving limited or no sexual-health information. High school librarians have the potential to help meet sexual-health information needs of…

The head coaches at smaller colleges usually have other job responsibilities that include teaching, along with the responsibilities of coaching, recruiting, scheduling, and other coaching-related jobs. There is often a dual role involved for these coaches who try to juggle two different jobs that sometimes require different skill sets and involve…

A counselor's academic guidance is critical because student stress levels are high due to increased levels of expectations that they perform at their best (Campbell & Dahir, 1997; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). In the last decade, education reform has moved towards more standards-driven curriculum/a, basic skills acquisition, and…

Discussion of performance improvement focuses on work processes. Highlights include a definition of process; types of process steps, including operational and nonoperational; desired process characteristics, including high reliability and low variability; a comparison of two different processes; and suggestions for process improvement, including…

Investigated the importance of assigned versus participative goal setting in defining effective supervisory behavior. Government employees (N=57) were assigned to self-set, participatively set, and assigned goal setting conditions. Results showed no significant difference in goal difficulty between those with participatively set goals and self-set…

This paper investigates aspects of the management of independent secondary school libraries in England and Wales. It is based on a survey of 150 independent school library managers, with a response rate of 68.7 percent, which was carried out as part of an ongoing PhD research project. The paper considers a range of issues important to school…

Several new programs have been added to those of the Comprehensive Occupational Data Analysis Programs (CODAP), all oriented toward analyzing and manipulating information describing work tasks, rather than jobs or persons. REXALL analyzes the inter-rater agreement among judges concerning task-factor ratings. TSKFAC adds factor weight vectors to…