Describes a collaborative effort between a university and leadership teams from one elementary school and one middle school to change the schools' learning environment to increase the emphasis on student task mastery and decrease the emphasis on student ability. (60 references) (MLF)

Discusses the National Engineering Education System (NEEDS), which provides a fully networked multimedia database, electronic classrooms, and authoring studios for the development of self-paced and collaborative learning environments for engineering education. Topics addressed include program goals; activities, including curriculum, recruitment,…

From site-based management to parent involvement and student self-esteem programs, a Louisville, Kentucky, middle school provides students, staff, and parents with opportunities to participate in education at all levels. (MLH)

Addresses theories of organizational effectiveness, a multivariate model, and determinants for effectiveness of local school citizens' participation organizations in a metropolitan public school system by surveying 52 citizen participants. Resource acquisition and internal process effectiveness are inversely correlated with perceived need for…

In the past decade, testing of young children has been excessive and inappropriate. Leftover IQ tests have been used to track children into ineffective programs or to deny them school entry. Prereading tests held over from the 1930s have encouraged the teaching of decontextualized skills. Assessment advocates must clearly demonstrate testing's…

This paper reviews issues in regular and special education and the changes these issues will require in university preparation of teachers. Issues concern the content of teacher preparation programs (such as developing behavioral management skills and training in concepts rather than techniques) and the changing school environment (such as…

Describes a first-year teacher's efforts to become a teacher and her experiences of the complex relationships among control, subject matter, and teaching. The article stresses the importance of the institutional context within which the beginner works, noting her relationship with her department head and mentor. (SM)

Investigated whether academic orientations in the home and school serve as a challenge or a pressure in the development of preschoolers. Subjects were 56 4- to 5-year-old prekindergarten children and their mothers. Although correlations were modest, findings suggested that children may experience early academic and didactic orientations as more of…

Attitudes largely explain why teachers of similar ability often obtain dissimilar results in the same situations. When teachers demonstrate willingness to make self-changes to improve the learning environment, they provide role models for students. By assessing their own influence first, teachers can better address needed changes in student…

Describes software that was designed in the United Kingdom to promote conceptual change in secondary school students studying mechanics. Direct Manipulation of Mechanical Microworlds, an interactive computer simulation, and VARILAB, a computer-based language for modelling systems, are explained; and two studies that will evaluate the effectiveness…

Worldwide, school is a pufferbelly locomotive chugging incongruously through a high-tech landscape. Changing schools significantly means smothering them with a critical mass of changes in rapid succession. Meanwhile, the education industry offers the public Band-Aids for whatever school wound is currently suppurating. In Future Schools, students…

Teacher educators visited the classrooms of elementary teachers they had prepared to observe and interview them. Their research discovered an interplay between the philosophy and pedagogy of their program and the graduates' practice, the individual teacher's preparation and practice and the school culture, and what observers saw and understood.…

Reports on a review of research into the effects of organizational structure on the acquisition of knowledge. Asserts that the opportunity to learn has two dimensions: (1) the amount of exposure; and (2) the quality of exposure. Concludes that teachers and students make decisions about these dimensions, which are affected by inducements and…

The development and validation of a new instrument, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory, for assessing student perceptions of psychosocial environment in science laboratory classrooms are described. Results with 3,727 high school students and 1,720 college students at 53 sites in 6 countries support the scale's validity. (SLD)

Thirty classes of fifth graders (n=536) were surveyed to see if their criteria for academic success, beliefs about the causes of success, and perceptions of teachers' expectations involved the coordination of personal values and contextual norms. Beliefs about causes of success have some relation to personal identities and students'…