Objective:: To help close the gap between health promotion research and practice by using systems thinking. Methods: We review 3 national US tobacco control initiatives and a project (ISIS) that has introduced systems thinking to tobacco control, speculating on ways in which systems thinking may add value to health promotion dissemination and…

Children face many important changes in the first eight years of life, including different learning centres, social groups, roles and expectations. Their ability to adapt to such a dynamic and evolving environment directly affects their sense of identity and status within their community over the short and long term. In particular, the key turning…

New Jersey has some good early learning programs in place, but it has not taken a systemic approach to ensure access, quality and coordination of programs. The broad nature of early learning, which encompasses health, child care, education and parent involvement, makes it difficult to create a uniform system. Roughly 20 different New Jersey state…

Understanding the interrelations among students' cognitive, emotional, motivational, and volitional processes is an emergening focus in educational psychology. A dynamical, component systems theory of emotions is presented as a promising framework to further unravel these complex interrelations. This framework considers emotions to be a process…

Based on the position that cultural ideologies shape child development, many developmental analyses have focused on analyzing cultural conceptions of independence and interdependence. Less attention has been paid to charting the developmental sequences of children's independent and interdependent behavior that are ostensibly shaped by cultural…

Various surveys have documented widespread support among US parents, students, teachers and health professionals for school-based comprehensive sexuality education. In many school districts, however, the sexuality education provided is minimal, incomplete or fragmented, and essential topics are often omitted or inaccurately presented. To help…

Fitness testing is an important assessment tool used by physical educators for many purposes. Some states require fitness testing to monitor individual student progress throughout the school year. Some physical educators use it to monitor the effects of the physical education curriculum and to teach concepts such as goal setting and personal…

Ohio's Model Industrial Technology Systems (MITS) project was initiated in 1987 to achieve the following: identify good activities in the areas of physical, communication, and bio-related technology; standardize the activities' format; and provide a coding system for their eventual use in a hypermedia system. To date, 220 activities have been…

When the faculty of a degree-awarding distance education institution is assembled, it is essential to meet the credentialing requirements established by the accrediting commission of the Distance Education and Training Council and the various state educational councils. It is also important to find faculty applicants with a love of teaching,…

This document reviews theories of cognitive style and methods of cognitive style assessment as they relate to the context of South Africa, where sociopolitical changes call for reassessment of theoretical assumptions in education and training. The report consists of six chapters. After a brief introductory chapter, the second chapter gives an…

Evaluations of school restructuring, particularly school-based management (SBM) and shared decision making (SDM), have tended to focus on problems of implementation and on its consequent failure to fulfill its promises. Inadequate resources, unclear responsibilities, inhibiting regulations, and institutional resistance have all been cited as…

Issues in the application of Total Quality Management (TQM) to the development of educational standards are discussed in this paper. The first part describes the basic tenets of TQM, which are: focus on the customer; long term commitment to continuous improvement; top management support and guidance; employee involvement and responsibility;…

This paper presents an operational framework of change, derived from a synthesis of three change models. It is argued that to create a quality school, educators must use a model that helps participants internalize the components of the desired educational corporate culture. The organization must be examined in terms of the past, present, and…

Curriculum developers must work hard to avoid the "what errors" of curriculum development. They must avoid failing to teach what should be taught and teaching what is no longer relevant and needed. Curriculum "what errors" are likely to occur when teachers design courses so as to teach what they know best, what they were…

This book uses General Systems Theory to unify approaches to career development. Part 1 presents a review of existing theoretical literature. Chapter 1 discusses overall content and structure of the existing state of career theory. Chapters 2-4 introduce theories focusing on content; on the process of career development; and on content and…