Policy and program decisions involve choices among different ways of preparing teachers. These choices are shrouded in increasingly contentious debates as teacher shortages reach crisis proportions. Yet, research on special education teacher education is almost nonexistent. Findings from comparative research documenting the characteristics of…

Specialists in curriculum, instruction, and assessment typically work with colleagues in their own field. It is argued that such isolationism is educationally harmful, especially during today's era of heightened accountability for educators. To diminish excessive specialization by curriculum, instruction, and assessment personnel, amelioration…

Describes a library media management staff development course to focus on best practices in time management for the school year. Highlights include goal setting and planning; access to information; leadership and advocacy; and customizing ready reference files for useful media management information. (LRW)

Big, comprehensive projects involving multiple teachers, components, and electronic media can daunt the most ambitious educator. But for Library Media Specialist Bonnie French, big projects are no problem! A pioneer SOS database contributor, Bonnie can be aptly dubbed the "queen of collaboration." In this article, the author discusses how Bonnie…

Developing appropriate prevocational services for students with visual impairments and additional severe disabilities presents a challenge. A recent pilot transition program acknowledged this difficulty by deciding that "the inclusion of students, who require an extraordinary amount of individual attention to learn skills, would detract from…

The library media center has long been a beloved and specialized learning environment for students, a place rich with opportunities to pursue specialized inquiries, interests, and ideas. In recent years, state and national standards for information literacy and technology have delineated a framework for what students are expected to know and be…

Methods courses, the mainstays of preservice teacher education in social studies, are curiously understudied in general terms although there are numerous focused studies on such topics as methods textbooks, problem-based learning, and critical thinking, including an issue focused on reflections on the methods course in the "International Social…

This is a collaborative column by K-12 library media specialists and academic librarians who write about the motivational strategies that have worked for them in teaching IL skills. Students who do not raise their hand to answer a question and are reluctant to learn something new often suffer from something called "fear of failure." They…

Students from a master's program in Substance Abuse and Clinical Counseling (SACC) at a midsize southeastern university were surveyed to determine personal characteristics and career goals. Sixty-two of the 68 students currently enrolled in the program volunteered to anonymously complete the questionnaire. The typical profile of the SACC student…

While the promotion of literacy is a fundamental mission for all librarians, over the past decades the definition has expanded and, paradoxically, fragmented into various multiliteracies, such as computer literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, and so forth. From these, a broader concept of student competencies, one that includes both…

The labor market is sending out explicit signals that determine the behavior of present and potential workers. These signals give impetus to the development of education. In the past few years, for example, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of college students and higher educational institutions; the sphere of supplementary…

The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) is an independent, not-for-profit membership organisation dedicated to raising levels of achievement in secondary education. It has a membership of over 4900 schools and organisations. SSAT works with head teachers, teachers and students to encourage them to develop and share new and effective…

This report, the Center on Education Policy's (CEP's) third annual review of Maryland's efforts to restructure schools under the No Child Left Behind Act, finds that (1) although between school years 2006-07 and 2007-08 the number of schools in the restructuring implementation phase declined slightly, there was a drastic increase in the number of…

The history of organized international exchange and training programs for educators in Europe and North America is not very long. In the pre-World War II era, those programs were scarce and generally limited in their influence on both host and guest educational communities. In the study of the impact of short-term sojourns on teachers, Wilson…

In many ways, science classrooms and school library media centers are parallel universes struggling with their own reform issues and with documenting their own positive impacts. As the trend toward data-driven decisions grows in the school setting, it is increasingly important for every component of the learning environment to have demonstrable…