This report describes the planning, operation, and outcomes of a questionnaire-and-site-visit survey of language teaching facilities and activities at Peace Corps in-country training centers on a worldwide basis, conducted from March to September 1981. The report is divided into three sections: an overview, an analysis of aspects of current…

A quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest, treatment group/control group design was used to test the effectiveness of 36 entrepreneurship modules. The field test design featured multiple replications at sites across the country. Participating students were enrolled in various types of secondary vocational schools and programs and experienced various…

Science as inquiry is a key content standard #1 the National Science Education Standards; however, few secondary science teachers successfully and consistently implement inquiry-based instruction in their classrooms. This research examines the role of reform-based curricular materials in influencing the classroom practices of 12 high school…

An instructional program to improve adolescent student mastery of real-life decision-making skills produced very positive results in terms of teacher comfort with the program and increased student performance. Five core skills for decision-making were the basis of the program: identification, selection and assessment of decision criteria,…

The purpose of this project was to strengthen consumer and homemaking education programs in New Jersey by increasing the competence of home economics educators to meet the needs of school-age pregnant and parenting students through their programs. The objectives of the project were: (1) to field test a curriculum designed for school-age pregnant…

In 1993 teachers in the Virginia Beach (Virginia) public schools asked parents what they think about classroom practices as part of a client satisfaction project. A questionnaire called the Parent Perception Survey was mailed to more than 40,000 homes to ask about parent satisfaction with the teaching their children were receiving. A teacher task…

Employment interviews are widely used in the selection of quality teachers, and indeed research confirms administrators' belief in the validity of the procedure. However, many key recommendations for improving the general reliability of interviews including selecting questions that are job-related and research grounded, including well designed…

In 1992-93 a client satisfaction plan for teachers was developed and implemented in the Virginia Beach (Virginia) public school system. This report describes the processes of design and implementation as well as preliminary findings from the field test of a survey soliciting parent perceptions of teacher performance. Although students were…

Conferences, retreats, workshops, and pre- and inservice training programs on the infusion method of career education for the handicapped were conducted under a project designed (1) to develop and implement a field-based instructional model which includes training of university faculty in methods of career education and (2) to encourage the…

A description is given of an exemplary program, developed by Claremont Teachers College in West Australia, that involved on-site teacher development to help introduce children in grades 1-4 to historical thinking. The College provided academic staff for the project and assisted teachers by providing advice and materials. The long term objectives…

This paper describes the process used to design and evaluate a computer-based tool that guides the development of lesson plans. The tool, PLANalyst, contains a small expert system with a human face that analyzes lessons and gives specific feedback for improvement. The process used to create PLANalyst can be generalized to the development of tools…

The purpose of this research is to determine whether we can use classroom artifacts as the basis for making valid judgments about the presence of reform-oriented teaching practices in middle-school mathematics classes. Our approach compares ratings based on collections of artifacts assembled by teachers according to our directions (the "Scoop…