This article highlights the importance of peer interactions for pre-school-aged children's social and language development and demonstrates the need for professional development in this area. Learning Language and Loving It[TM]--The Hanen Program[R] for Early Childhood Educators and Preschool Teachers is a professional development program that is…

The role and importance of national reform network participation in the implementation of one of the most successful U.S. whole-school reform efforts--Success for ALL (SFA)--is profiled here. The paper explores this educational network beyond professional development and examines the relationship between participation in SFA's national reform…

In an era of decreasing funding of the human services sector, it is imperative that the service sector be more effective and efficient. This study examined the outcomes of a management development intervention. Subjects (N=187) were middle managers in the helping professions. The experimental group was composed of 100 managers who voluntarily…

This paper proposes an alternative means by which to produce improvement in the quality of professional convention programs. This method is one in which concern for professional relatedness supersedes a concern for individual competition. Dialogue as the first essential element in relatedness would encourage varied perspectives on research…

Educational reforms are advocated based on rationales that emerge from the research literature. However, evaluation studies seldom examine whether the rationales used to argue for a reform actually hold up when empirical evidence is examined after the reform has been implemented. This paper examines survey data from 3 years of analyses of early…

This evaluation determined the workability of the Northeast Ohio Principals Academy Pilot Entry Year Program, noting the differential effects of its major components in developing portfolios and as a contributing factor to school improvement. The program provides leadership and support to beginning principals, provides collaborative learning…

This research report builds on the results of the CATCH project (Webb and Dekker, 2002). The CATCH project is an effort to apply and scale up previous results and design a professional development program to bring about fundamental changes in teachers' instruction to support change in teachers' formative assessment practices. In this report we…

Although Rochester, New York, is a pioneer in teacher reform, change has been painfully slow. Pockets of success are not reflected in district statistics. The 1987 reforms directed at teachers were not far-reaching enough to ensure improved test scores, given continuing problems of large class sizes, crowded schools, students' increasing poverty,…

Introduces different kinds of meta-knowledge which all have positive influence on the usage of knowledge-management systems. Presents results from a qualitative study conducted in five German companies, and derives relations between kinds of meta-knowledge and the characteristics of knowledge management systems. Only if this experience with…

To determine why so little research has been done on the effectiveness of programs designed to link instructional improvement and faculty development, this paper describes the characteristics of various programs and provides general recommendations about the necessary elements of effective faculty development programs. (SLD)

The author recommends an approach to public management studies that teaches how public management affects the quality of citizens' lives. Using examples from the literature on schools, prisons, and armies, he argues that public management studies should attempt to specify what ends given public organizations ought to achieve and how best to…

Strategies for making the best use of time at a conference or other professional development activity include suggestions for thorough pretrip planning, travel, attending sessions, getting the most from exhibits, using the conference situation to make contacts or gather information, keeping track of family and personal concerns, and preparing to…

Reports on the Archdiocese of Louisville's (Kentucky) mentoring program for directors of religious education (DREs), which provides an opportunity to become familiar with the standards for DRE ministry. Examines the five stages of the mentoring process: matchmaking, orientation, monthly meetings, concluding session of prayer and testimony, and…

Social work programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education educate students for practice at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This paper presents a critical analysis of social work education in the United States. The analysis suggests that graduates of social work programs do not appear to master the skills, knowledge and values…

This paper examines the summer component of a year-long professional development program. The program was developed based on recent models of effective professional development that indicate that teachers should guide the direction and focus of the professional development program. Specific activities in the summer program were adapted from a…