The argument between advocates of the whole language approach and the phonics approach threatens to become so polarized and politicized that agreeing on a middle ground seems at times impossible, and the voices of reason and experience are drowned out. The debate erupted anew in California after alarming news stories about reading scores ranked…

A case study of 6 high school English teachers illustrates their attitudes, perspectives, and experiences as they became immersed in the first year of a collaborative inquiry community of school and university-based colleagues who redesigned a teacher education program together. Three major categories of growth emerged: (1) perceptions of English…

This fastback examines the theory and practice of constructivist teaching and suggests how teachers can decide what form of constructivist teaching they might want to use. Constructivist teaching theory is explored under the headings "knowledge" and "humans." According to constructivist theory, knowledge is constructed by humans, it is conjectural…

Extensive abstracts of papers presented at two poster sessions of a conference on learning disabilities (LD) are included. The first session of the conference focused on research on assessment and characteristics of students with learning disabilities. Individual papers covered the following topics: longitudinal case studies of college students…

The theory and practice of whole language teaching should be integral and simultaneous components of preservice teacher education. A number of instructional strategies and class activities can be used to provide preservice teachers with experiences similar to experiences they will provide to elementary school children. Examples of class activities…

ADAM (Administrative Development and Management), an administrator preparation partnership between Greenwood (South Carolina) School District 50 and Clemson University, is described in this paper. The program uses practicing administrators in collaboration with college faculty to train prospective school administrators. The purpose is to provide…

With the national focus on school improvement, universities are being asked to reevaluate graduate educational administration programs. In 1988, the University of Houston's Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies (ELCS) implemented a pilot program to experiment with a number of reform strategies. The Principals' Reflective,…

An activity has been used successfully for several years in a middle-school computer class to integrate writing instruction with computer science. Taking approximately five class periods, the activity consists of three phases: (1) the 6th-grade students use paper and pencil to write a story in any literary format; (2) 11th- and 12th-grade…

This paper develops a theory-practice view of administrative and organizational decision making. Its goals are to improve administrative decision-making processes, facilitate organizational change through faculty involvement, and increase the potential for success in education reform efforts. The first sections discuss the nature of theory and…

A study addressed the problem of making accurate descriptions of how teachers in first-grade classrooms help their students learn to read and write. It also related the approaches to reading instruction that teachers use to their students' views of reading and their achievement at the end of first grade. For the study, information was gathered…

As the field of media studies progresses it moves with increasing fluency and fluidity among the disciplines, and the patterns of relationship that adhere in these dynamics hint at what the disciplines have to say to each other in general. For media studies to exercise a significant impulse toward holism and interdisciplinary synthesis, a model is…

Educational administration is currently debating the future of the profession and the most appropriate modes for the preparation of school leaders, including the role of higher education in developing preparation models. This paper reviews selected master's and doctoral programs in educational administration and argues that preparation programs…

This book presents an approach to professional education and higher education institutional reform based on teaching and research in organizational behavior and professional effectiveness. The work presents a theory of action that aims to enhance human activity, responsibility, self-actualization, learning, and effectiveness. In the first of three…

This book is a compilation of five papers presented at conferences between the years 1984 and 1990 on the integration of theory and practice in mathematics education. An introduction acknowledges the chasm felt between theory and practice, and gives an overview of the five papers. The first paper, "Developmental Research on Paper and in…

This paper explores the ideas of six adult educators from the 1920s to determine the relevance of their thinking to modern adult educators. Three were chose from Britain: Albert Mansbridge, Basil Yeaxlee, and Richard Tawney. From the United States, three influential theorists in the area were Edward Thorndike, John Dewey, and Eduard Lindeman.…