The Stupski Foundation has focused on the implementation of a comprehensive aligned instructional system as a critical lever for district reform. In the challenging environment of urban education, reforms focusing on only one system component (i.e., assessment, curriculum materials, professional development, resource utilization, regulatory…

This research examines factors that influenced teachers' decisions to participate in professional development activities and, subsequently, to implement ideas gained through their participation. Twenty-four teachers who were employed by an urban school district shared their perceptions regarding the content, context, and process of a districtwide…

In spite of the need for pre- and post-adoption support, studies indicate low levels of services utilization among adoptive families, particularly those involving children with special needs. This study examines the relationship between utilization of adoptions services and adoptive child and family characteristics, pre-adoptive risk history, and…

Educators seek to nurture in the hearts and minds of students a sense of moral thinking, action and behaviour. What these constitute is dependent on one's perspective, or worldview. Moral thinking and action emerge from worldviews or visions of life--religious or secular. In the history of common or public schools educators have linked moral…

Two interpretive case studies are reported that investigate the intentionality of defensiveness versus open-mindedness in persons who hold flawed ideological beliefs. The 1st analyzes an academic authority's resistance to information that disconfirms a therapeutic intervention that he has been successfully promoting. His dissociation and…

The booklet presents the report of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor regarding the 1983 Child Abuse Amendments to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978. The Amendment expands the definition of child abuse to include abuse by…

To identify replicable homogeneous subgroups among three samples of unwed mothers a multivariate clustering technique was employed to analyze the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) responses of unwed mothers giving up their babies for adoption (Ns=122 and 127) and unwed mothers keeping their babies (N=47). Three personality…

Reviews current issues in adoption: termination of parental rights, rights of unwed fathers, subsidized adoption, the recent influx of Vietnamese children, black market babies, agency accountability in placing children, the right of the adoptee to know his biological parents. (ED)

This paper outlines current changes in American adoption practice and the controversies surrounding these changes. It includes a discussion of the role that neo-Kantian and utilitarian perspectives have played in American adoption policy and practice, and offers an alternative, the communitarian perspective, described by Sandel (1984). Adoption…

Testimonies were heard by the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs and Public Lands in reference to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which establishes standards for the placement of Indian children in foster or adoptive homes to prevent the breakup of Indian families. Representatives from the following organizations testified: Administration for…

This paper examines the recent research on the change process, with emphasis on implementation of educational innovations, to see what messages might be implied for teachers and their teaching skills. How various aspects of the change process research lead to the identification and description of these kinds of skills for teachers are described.…

This study addressed the question of why, to what extent, and under what conditions teachers fully implement and adapt instructional innovations. The subjects, a group of 24 ninth grade content area teachers, were seen to have implemented a particular set of reading innovations only to a limited degree. Five major themes were revealed as having an…

This brief paper is intended, not to provide legal advice, but to alert foster parents to some of the key legal issues affecting their role in decision-making for the foster child. Contents discuss foster parents' access to adequate information concerning their foster children and their right to pursue grievances, resist agency decisions to remove…

Consideration is given to the way in which the foundational ideas of Kohlberg, Dewey, and Piaget have been extended in educational practice in relation to the way in which conclusions from research are used to guide program construction. (Author/KM)

The issue of whether or not the basic principle guiding the placement of Australian children in need of care is applied in practice is addressed in this expanded seminar paper. It is pointed out that the principle stating that the child's welfare should be of paramount concern has been incorporated into Australian legislation in the Adoption Act…