Invitational theory addresses the total educational environment and culture of the classroom and school, focusing on the people, places, policies, programs, and processes that constitute any school culture. Invitational teaching is a process for communicating caring and appropriate messages to nurture the realization of student potential as well…

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) was created in 1987 to foster the success of the Baldrige National Quality Program. The award program, sponsored by the United States Department of Education, is a public-private partnership dedicated to improving national competitiveness. The National Institute of Standards and Technology…

Much has been learned about the identification and treatment of mental illness in children, but issues remain unresolved. Many of the traditional service models do not meet the needs of today's children. There is a shortage of evidence-based treatment and much of the evidence that does exist is not being used. Key findings in neuroscience,…

This book is a directory of about 1,100 discretionary projects supported by the Office of Special Education Programs and focuses on projects concerned with personnel preparation. This second volume of four presents projects designed to help address state-identified needs for qualified personnel in special education, related services, early…

This research report discusses findings from descriptive studies that investigated the context and outcomes of educational programs for students with disabilities who were expected to receive standard high-school diplomas. The nine high schools included three in urban areas, three in suburban areas, and three in rural areas. Principals, special…

What contribution can information technology (IT) make to India's overall economic development? This paper provides an analytical framework centred around the concepts of comparative advantage, complementarities, and innovation. There is strong evidence that India has a strong and sustainable comparative advantage in software development and…

This report reviews the benchmarking practices that are presently being used at community colleges. It introduces the concept of a "culture of inquiry" as a means for judging their potential value. It classifies benchmarking efforts among three types--performance, diagnostic, and process--and characterizes each by its typical use. The…

This publication is designed to improve college instruction at the undergraduate level. Intended to be used as a tool box, it is a concise compilation of hundreds of teaching techniques and formats, classroom activities and exercises, suggestions to enhance instructor-student rapport, guidelines for assignments and papers, and tips for teaching…

This paper reports on a study of the teacher education practices and student characteristics that contribute to successful teachers of minority children, particularly African-American, whose background differs from their own. The study was conducted over two years on cohorts of students from a reflective teacher education program. First year…

This final report/doctoral dissertation describes activities and accomplishments of Project LIFT (Looking at Intervention Factors with Teachers), which assessed the relationships among classroom intervention acceptability, integrity, and effectiveness. Two studies were conducted. The first involved observing interventions implemented in 10 Iowa…

This paper introduces the concept of critical viewing and illustrates what it means to take a critical stance in classroom teaching practice. The paper's purposes are: first, to discuss the possibilities of criticism in classroom practice as defined by progressive educators; second, to explain the interrelationship between critical literacy and…

Loss and uprootedness are core problems of enforced separation, and are especially hard on children. Children in out-of-home care need help in dealing with separation, particularly in maintaining ties with family. This report details a study of how 36 social workers in 2 Canadian child protection agencies have managed separation issues with the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the growth of teachers' beliefs through being involved in the process of developing science, technology, and society modules based on the educational resources of a science museum in Taiwan. Action research was the source of data from two elementary and two secondary science teachers who participated in…

Adult educators create a curriculum whenever they explicitly or implicitly select some objects of knowledge over others, or choose a particular way to handle knowledge in their pedagogy. When the interests reflected in a curriculum are left unexamined, the role of knowledge as a phenomenon of power is not addressed and inequitable social…

Education decentralization efforts are examined in six primarily rural, sub-Saharan African countries--Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Stated reasons do not always reflect the real underlying rationales for decentralization. Education decentralization that is publicly advocated to improve service delivery and local…