The role of the special educator has changed. Similar to general educators, special educators are more accountable, more specialized, and more collaborative. To be effective in this new role, special educators need to recommit to the founding principles of the discipline and embrace the tools that allow them to meet the needs of students with…

In modern learning environments, the lecturer or educational designer is often confronted with multi-national student cohorts, requiring special consideration regarding language, cultural norms and taboos, religion, and ethics. Through a somewhat provocative example we demonstrate that taking such factors into account can be essential to avoid…

After reading "Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers" (Romano, 2000), two elementary teachers in Virginia became intrigued with Romano's notion of the multigenre paper as more than just a writing assignment but, rather, a multilayered, multivoiced literary experience. The multigenre paper allows young writers to use…

Many teachers would like to be able to offer their students individualized instruction. But they probably have not considered one option that would allow--indeed require--them to do so. Ms. Sarra and Ms. Olcott describe what it's like to teach adults in a school inside a maximum-security prison. (Contains 2 endnotes.)

The Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time (ELT) initiative was launched in 2005, and it provides grants to selected schools across multiple districts to increase instructional time by at least 300 hours per academic year. Participating schools receive an additional $1,300 per student to lengthen the day and/or year. Schools are expected to use the…

Higher education in the U.S. has traditionally prepared students for work and social success, but with families, work, and society itself undergoing revolutionary change, is this preparation sufficient to develop the 21st-century workforce? This book explores how evolving family structures, new ways of balancing work and personal lives, and rapid…

An innovative, practical guide for middle and high school teachers, this book is packed with specific ways that technology can help serve the goals of effective writing instruction. It provides ready-to-implement strategies for teaching students to compose and edit written work electronically; conduct Internet inquiry; create blogs, websites, and…

Computers can help the range of ways learners build up their own perception. Students who collect data from the Internet can be self-directed and independent. They can select sources to study and the connections to follow. Relying on the bounds laid down by teachers, the students may be in full control of their subjects and their studies. Students…

Consciously or unconsciously, teachers often act differently toward students based on the assumptions they have about the individual learner's capabilities. Studies show that the lack of high expectations tends to go hand-in-hand with low achieving classrooms. In these classrooms, teachers generally view their students as limited in their ability…

Personalization of learning and instruction is the most critical issue facing contemporary education--not state testing or vouchers or even aging schools. Personalization is an attempt on the part of a school to take into account individual student characteristics and needs and flexible instructional practices in organizing the learning…

The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices," is to formulate specific and coherent evidence-based recommendations that educators can use to improve literacy levels among adolescents in upper elementary, middle, and high schools. It includes…

Researchers and practitioners have emphasized the importance of teaching self-determination skills to students with disabilities for more than a decade. One major barrier to teaching self-determination in recent years has been teachers' not knowing how to focus on reading, writing, and mathematics and simultaneously teach self-determination…

As classrooms become more culturally diverse, it becomes more imperative that differentiated instruction occur in elementary classrooms. Today's classrooms usually contain students with a wide range of abilities and varied experiential backgrounds. These students learn at different rates and in different ways. Differentiation is important in the…

Archived data from four courses taught with computer-aided personalized system of instruction (CAPSI)--an online, self-paced, instructional program--were used to explore the relationship between objectively rescored final exam grades, peer reviewing, and progress rate--i.e., the rate at which students completed unit tests. There was a strong…

Much of what happens in the learning process focuses on teaching to the average student, but the bell curve has deflated with fewer students in the middle, making the educational dilemma more about "how to connect" with students regardless of diverse abilities and various backgrounds. According to the "Twenty-Fourth Annual Report to Congress" by…