A pilot project demostrates that a carefully designed program encompassing training of foster parents, use of volunteers, community support, and full commitment by foster care workers can result in permanent homes for youngsters. (CM)

Thanks to a joint effort between the Orange County (Florida) Schools and Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, nonreading middle schoolers are moving beyond shame to conquer literacy problems. Students participate daily in a learning lab employing multimedia software designed to improve word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling…

Describes on-the-job training models developed by the Pilot Mini District of the Cincinnati Public Schools for integrating computer technology into classroom instruction: (1) Shadowing; (2) One-on-One for One; (3) Rotating Topics; (4) Walk-in Clinics; and (5) Student Exchanges. (AEF)

Describes a project that invited immigrant speakers who were developing English-language proficiency to visit elementary classrooms to read aloud a story they had shared with their own children. Despite differing levels of formal schooling and first- and second-language proficiency, every participating parent had a successful experience as a…

Argues that the ethnographic interview gives teachers an insider's understanding of an aspect of a foreign culture and endows them with the insight to interpret the insider account from an observer's perspective. The article describes materials developed for inservice training and a pilot course that tested them with Irish teachers preparing to…

The effectiveness of a program designed to make secondary school students in Canada more aware of barriers to women in the workplace was studied in a preliminary development phase and a pilot test with 13 students and 23 comparisons. Results indicate that the instruction is effective in increasing student knowledge. (SLD)

A Delaware middle-school principal reflects on a small town's provincial, picayune mindset when confronted with the RE:LEARNING project. Community culture made change very difficult; tradition and stakeholders' fears worked against new initiatives. Also, the district's commitment to the project was very superficial, and local politics stifled…

Describes two pilot programs at the University of North Florida (Jacksonville, FL) that connect instructional technology into the teacher education program: one uses technology in a community-based learning environment to improve preservice elementary teachers' science education preparation; the second involves a learning community of students…

A pilot study examined effects of pre- and peri-adoption therapy on adoptive placements of 13 children who had been in foster care and who had been identified as "emotionally unstable." Intervention included counseling with licensed therapists and other services, such as parent education to ease the transition into permanency. Findings…

Describes a pilot study that compared the relative effectiveness of three versions of a hypermedia system designed to permit inservice teachers to learn instructional design from a computer. Text, sound/text, and sound versions are discussed, and results showed that learning was greatest with the sound version. (Contains 61 references.)…

Reviews the history, goals, achievements, and future of a graduate internship program sponsored by the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Students are placed in internships in a variety of clinical and research areas concerned with the development of health policy and careers in applied medical sociology. (NL)

Describes an international scientific computer conference involving several Canadian and Indonesian academic institutions in which Canadian librarians offered reference services to Indonesian scientists. The project is evaluated with a view to providing assistance to further pilot projects investigating the feasibility of a similar information…

Presents a brief overview of the 1989 Dow Jones Intensive Journalistic Writing Institute at Marquette University. (MM)

A pilot study involving 90 percent of the parents of 200 seventh graders attending two junior high schools evaluated the effectiveness of active versus passive methods of obtaining parental consent. Passive consent can provide a viable alternative to active consent when supplemented by appropriate backup and privacy safeguards. (TJH)

Reviews the creation and implementation of a pilot program at Northern Arizona University's Center for Excellence in Education that delivered instruction to graduate students via America Online. Discusses the program's interactive teaching/learning processes and the benefits of the communication medium, instructional materials, and instructor…