This book describes a wilderness therapy program for troubled youth. Teenagers struggling with drugs, abusive or neglectful families, depression, suicidal thoughts, or their own impulses to lie or steal spend months in the Utah desert learning to survive in the wilderness, cooperate in group activities and problem solving, communicate with other…

The learner's role in acquiring cognitive and interpersonal skills in a first-year medical school course in neurobiology (12 students) that used a small-group, problem-based teaching method. Objectives of the study were to: (1) determine the cognitive and interpersonal skills the students believed were important; (2) evaluate how well the students…

This book is a learner's manual for a course on how to develop empowered teams for higher education management, how to function effectively as a team member, and how to objectively evaluate one's impact on the team. Taking a hands-on approach to learning about quality, the course introduces quality principles, asks students to apply these in a…

This booklet provides ways for organizational team leaders to assess their team's effectiveness at regular intervals and to monitor their team's performance. The booklet identifies six key aspects, or dimensions, consistent across all teams. If all six dimensions are strong within a team, the team has the means to conduct its work and perform…

A multi-age summer adventure camp at the University of Idaho offers 4 days of challenging activities in the wilderness to elementary age students, junior high leaders, high school counselors, and university interns. An associated private school offers up to 20 students, ages 3-10, an alternative to traditional public and private schools. Both…

In career and technical education (CTE), advisory committees are groups of employers and community representatives who advise educators on the design, development, operation, evaluation, and revision of CTE programs. These committees may oversee an entire program or institution, provide input to a specific department or technical area, or advise…

Academic collaboration among students takes place not only inside the classrooms but outside of class as well. This study investigated such out-of-class academic collaboration among Singaporean polytechnic students as they worked on assignments in which their instructors had made collaboration mandatory. Data were collected via questionnaires…

Two teachers taught a unit to two classes of students. High- and low-ability students did better in the small group approach, while medium ability students did better in the large group. Analyses of group processes indicated students benefited from peer tutoring processes which occurred in small groups. (Author/DWH)

Presents moral development as consisting of reasoning and action. Analyzes it from the perspective of small-group processes and behaviors. Discusses the bureaucratic and authoritarian nature of the school system and suggests it mitigates against moral behavior and reasoning. Concludes that schools should promote moral education toward action.…

The Life Planning Workshop for High School Students focuses on developing self-control and decision-making skills to handle all the major life roles. Both short-term and long-term goals were considered. Field testing among low income Black students was successful. (JAC)

Describes the experience of Brown University (Rhode Island) in offering alumni a six-week electronic seminar, entirely text-driven, on drugs and drug policy in which course exchanges occurred with listserv software and electronic mail. Outlines the course's background and design, student demographics, technical support, dynamics of class…

Notes that collaborative action research helped Australian adult education teachers refine their classroom skills and reflect critically on their current practice. Discusses research designed to develop teachers' skills in meeting the English language learning needs of disparate groups of learners and to assist these teachers in redirecting their…

Describes an in-class exercise using students' discussion of their answers on a multiple choice test to demonstrate the powerful effects and pervasiveness of social influence. After a brief multiple choice test, students discuss their answers with their neighbors and then answer again. Similar response patterns emerge among the participants. (MJP)

Describes distinctions among three strands of communication in the second-language classroom: cooperative learning, i.e., a particular set of classroom techniques fostering learner interdependence as a route to cognitive and social development; collaborative learning, which views learning as a construction of knowledge within a social context; and…

A college teacher explains how weekly "critical incident questionnaires" illuminate what students think is significant in a class. Such questionnaires point out developing instructional problems, encourage students to be reflective learners, support diversity in teaching methods, build trust, and suggest possibilities for teacher…