The author describes the role of preschool supervisors. She provides insights into changes in the dynamics between a group of teachers and supervisors as a result of their joint participation in a six-month professional development course to help them enrich preschool literacy environments and reflect on teacher and supervisory practices. A list…

The theme of this paper is a discussion of the relationship between action learning and organizational learning. The main argument is that action learning has been understood in terms of the impact that it can have within the organization, and that, in addition, it is important to ask--what is the impact of organization on action learning? The…

The primary purpose of this exploratory study is to provide insight on how to use online discussions to foster collaborative learning and how to design assessment processes to evaluate the effectiveness of those discussions. This study focuses on the pedagogical role of discussion, effective practices in discussion, guidelines for creating…

To help alleviate issues of free-riding and conflicts in team projects, this study proposes the systematic incorporation of project management methods to introduce a process-oriented approach to and a critical praxis in team projects. We examined how the systematic use of project management methods influenced students' performance in team…

Based on Penn State's popular "Innovation Insights" series, this book brings together in one handy reference nearly a decade of tried and true insights into continuous quality improvements in higher education. Their five-step model for integrating planning, assessment, and improvement moves plans off the shelf and into the weekly and daily…

This article elaborates a model for understanding pedagogy in online educational forums. The model identifies four key components. Intellectual engagement describes the foreground cognitive processes of collaborative learning. Communication processes operating in the background accumulate an ever richer store of shared understandings that enable…

Objective: Six items were administered to a multiethnic sample of 435 middle school--age participants in a group-delivered safer sex intervention to determine their reliability and validity. Method: Exploratory analyses were followed by confirmatory factor analyses, and then correlations of scale scores with theoretically related variables were…

Principals can tap the tacit knowledge, or "deep smarts," of their teachers in a variety of ways, many of which are based on the notion that tacit knowledge is best sought indirectly. Coming right out and asking people to share what they have learned over the years can be intimidating and disconcerting, especially if trust has not yet been…

Complicated issues arise when a group leader resumes practice after suffering a disability. The author, a nurse psychotherapist/researcher with a doctoral degree, director of nursing research at a veterans' hospital, and a psychodynamic practitioner in private practice, suffered a major stroke. The author felt extremely vulnerable and struggled as…

This two-volume work is intended to help readers develop powerful new ways of thinking about organizational principles, and apply them to policy-making and management in colleges and universities. The book is written with two audiences in mind: administrative and faculty leaders in institutions of higher learning, and students (both doctoral and…

This study identified characteristics of adventure programs valued by adolescents in treatment. Subjects included 11 experts in the field of adventure programming and 207 participants in adventure programs at 12 adolescent treatment programs. The experts, through a modified Delphi process, identified valued program characteristics. Program…

The practice of treating students as valuable contributors to the educational process can be traced back at least as far as Socrates. Unfortunately, the predominate pattern of pedagogy in the United States has been one of exclusion. Those instructors who are part of recent movement to help their students enter the academic discourse face the…

Virtually everyone involved with forensics has, at one time or another, seen or heard references to debate teams or squads as "groups." Many questions concerning the label "group," however, exist. A brief examination of definitions of the term group by scholars in the field of small group communication confirms that T. M.…

Satisfaction is a construct that is important to the development of intrinsic motivation and the continuing effort to learn. Research that helps to identify those factors that contribute to satisfaction is useful in the design of electronic support systems for individuals and groups. This paper investigates the impact of "need for…

This paper examines the development of cohesion and self-disclosure during the mandatory group experience of a masters level training program in counseling. Differences between cohesion and self-disclosure in these groups, as opposed to what might be expected in a more naturalistic setting, are described and implications for the training of group…