In 1990, a study was conducted to holistically evaluate the activities of the Employee Development Program at Paradise Valley Community College (PVCC) and to determine if employee groups differed significantly in their evaluations of the effectiveness of the activities. Of the 114 full- and part-time board-approved employees of PVCC, 86 (75%)…

A 10-week training program in a private nonprofit residential treatment program for children and youth was designed to help a treatment team increase its team functioning skills as measured by a pre- and post-training survey of individual and team effectiveness. The treatment program was located in a rural community and served people from eight…

A 5-year Title III grant received by Northern Maine Technical College (NMTC) in 1989 provided funding for professional development (PD) activities at the college. To evaluate the impact of the grant and plan for the continuation of the professional development program, a study was conducted in 1994 near the end of the grant period. Following a…

A program was developed for six kindergarten students identified as at risk because of developmental delays. The program involved an hour of instruction after the regular school day, 2 days a weeks for a 10-week period, with a curriculum focusing on visual, auditory, and motor development. Specific skill areas included visual motor coordination,…

This practicum developed a program to enhance the job performance of support personnel (behavior modification technicians) who work with students having conduct disorders. The behavior modification technicians provided building-level support for principals and teachers working with black adolescents from socially deprived backgrounds. Inservice…

The practicum sought to identify areas of relative strength and weakness in support for the Saint Leo College (Florida) Library Acquisitions Project, a project to improve library support to the Military Education Program administered by Saint Leo College on military installations throughout the Southeast. Using the Interactive Forces Theory of…

An inservice training program to enhance the ability of child protective services (CPS) workers to provide parent education to their clients was developed and tested with CPS workers in a rural Ohio county. The CPS workers' need for training in delivery of parent education was assessed through an 11-item pretraining survey that was completed by 20…

The director of an Early Childhood Development Center located in the Southeast United States developed a practicum to provide Spanish instruction for preschool children. The main goal of the practicum intervention was to increase the Spanish vocabulary of 18 children of 5 years of age by 30 words over a 10-week period. Spanish words were presented…

The adult basic education (ABE) program at Nicolet Area Technical College (NATC) evaluated its training and development (T&D) process for new basic education instructors. The study gathered monitoring and screening criteria that addressed valuable components for use in an instrument for validating effectiveness of the ABE program (T&D)…

A study examined the impact of work teams on production, quality, and morale within the State of Alaska Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, using data from fiscal years 1992 and 1993 when a change from a hierarchical organization to a team-based approach took place in the agency. Production was defined as the percentage of placements achieved…

This practicum aimed to provide nonverbal students with a communication program to increase expressive language for daily living skills. Target students were four children (ages 6 to 7) with cerebral palsy. The practicum involved introducing children to pleasurable activities that encouraged communication behaviors, showing the children…

This paper describes a project to improve the responsibility levels of 16 gifted students in fourth grade attending a daily 2-hour language arts gifted education class. Students had become inconsistent about completing assignments, maintaining an orderly environment, and communicating necessary information to parents. A teacher-developed checklist…

This practicum study was designed to improve the communication and social skills of 43 students (ages 14-22) with developmental disabilities by involving families in at-home treatment activities that reinforced and enhanced in-school and community-based speech/language therapy and by increasing attendance of parents at school meetings and…

The inclusion of multicultural education in the curriculum of child care centers is becoming a necessity, particularly in homogeneous communities, as the ethnic make-up of society continues to change. This practicum project implemented and evaluated a strategy intended to increase the use of multicultural education in a middle-to-upper-class…

An adaptive physical education program was implemented for two special classes of educable mentally retarded children, grades K-3 in California. Children from a regular kindergarten class also participated in the program. The program operated for 5 months, with children receiving motor skills training 40 minutes per day, 4 days per week. Analysis…