In August, 1997, Gavilan College (Gilroy, California) was awarded a Fund for Instructional Improvement grant to review the current and projected roles of information competency instruction within California community colleges and to develop an information competency draft plan for system implementation, training, and evaluation. Five day-long…

Maria Montessori's child-centered teaching method came to the United States in 1913 and became linked with an approach to progressive education and child rearing which many Americans considered permissive. During the post-World War II years, advocates of Montessori's method combined this permissive mode with elements of an authoritarian mode to…

This paper addresses critical questions concerning the educational needs of African American students with behavior disorders. These include: the historical context; effects of reform and restructuring movements on this population; the unresolved issue of defining "seriously emotionally disturbed" or "emotional or behavior…

This book offers specific suggestions to teachers who are attempting to relinquish old boss-management systems by putting the newer lead-management theory into practice in their classrooms. Leading, rather than bossing, creates classrooms in which students not only do competent work but begin to do quality work. The book begins by explaining that…

This article examines the teacher training program at the Canada-China Language Centre in Beijing, China, and the communicative teaching methodology that it employs in helping scientists, government officials, and other professionals improve their English language skills. The staff consist of both Canadian and Chinese teachers of English, who…

This paper draws heavily on quantitative synthesis of empirical research on teaching, and for comparison, related influences on learning, such as the student's motivation, home environment, and exposure to television. The first section explains the techniques of explicit search and selection of evidence and the statistical evaluation and summary…

Training of teaching assistants (TAs) in the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts is described. Training prepares TAs for the responsibility of being the primary class instructors who design the curriculum, teach, and evaluate students with minimal supervision. Training sessions consist of an orientation workshop at the beginning of…

Presenting a portrait of a high school literature classroom, this paper gives a detailed, evocative characterization of what one particular and well-regarded high school literature teacher actually does in her classroom. The paper describes how the teacher-researcher chose a colleague whose experience and expertise were generally thought to be…

This report describes the kinds of preparation and continual staff development elementary school teachers need to help them acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to foster science learning. In addition, the conditions and support needed to create an environment where good science teaching can flourish are discussed. Chapters included are:…

Today's young people must cope with a shrinking planet earth; deal with complex human relationships and the dynamics of explosive social and technological change; and function in a world which has few precedents especially in the area of social change. This thesis delineates a practical methodology for teaching high school anthropology based on…

The process used by one researcher in developing an inventory of specific tasks performed by language teachers is described. The objective was to facilitate research on language teachers' jobs in a variety of countries and under differing teaching conditions and to provide job profiles for use in teacher education and by teachers, their unions,…

A teaching model is a distinct set of ordered steps or phases created to achieve certain outcomes. These outcomes are different for different models, although some similarities exist among certain models, thus permitting the formation of model "clusters." These clusters or families include the information processing family, personal family, social…

Instructional leadership studies are plentiful but have many shortcomings, including lack of definition of key variables, problems of causality, overrepresentation of exemplary schools, and lack of validity and reliability in research design and implementation. Definitions of "leadership" and "instruction" are needed. There is…

Several core areas of urban educational distress are summarized in this paper. These form the basis for the development of the central theme which is concerned with defining society's failure to produce educated young adults and develop their cognitive learning potential. This failure is discussed in terms of a range of socioeconomic attributes. A…

The major goals of this project were (1) to provide high school staff members with an understanding of the process of infusing career education into the curriculum and the capability of applying it in daily classroom lessons, (2) to develop material suitable for use in the process of infusing career education into the high school curriculum, and…