One of a series written for child caregivers working in military day care centers, this book is about creating environments for "pretoddlers," children 13 through 24 months of age. The book is divided into two parts, with selected resources at the end. Part 1 discusses some ways to organize and arrange physical space for pretoddlers,…

The major question addressed in a study of secondary school teachers was, to what degree do organizational incentives result in maintaining in the profession committed teachers whose primary satisfactions and reasons for persistence are related to students, curriculum, and classroom procedures? Interviews were conducted with 30 secondary school…

The purpose of this research was to investigate and describe the relationship of environmental change to superintendent-school board decision-making and superintendent turnover. Assuming the resource dependence model of organizational open system theory, researchers hypothesized that the amount of decision-making autonomy boards grant to…

This research studies task-based stress among teachers in a rural setting. A 51-item instrument was administered to teachers in 12 schools to determine (1) the extent of differential reactions to a wide range of task-based teaching events, as correlated with situational characteristics (sex, age, elementary or secondary affiliation, school size);…

Two papers describe two aspects of French foreign language instruction in West Germany. The first, "L'enseignement du francais en Republique Federale d'Allemagne" by Abel, deals with the institutional framework for French instruction in West Germany. A discussion of the instructional situation looks first at the history of French…

This document states the position of the National Association of Elementary School Principals regarding the essential ingredients of a fine elementary or middle school. It combines the findings of current research on effective schooling with the practical, onsite experience of working principals. After a brief introduction, these standards are…

Recent studies suggest the existing applications of high technology to the improvement of schooling are relatively ineffective. Their potential may be better realized when newer, more powerful technology is introduced and educators learn to make it succeed by sorting out the factors and aspects of effective schooling, learning, and teaching that…

Children have long been "objects of inquiry", that is, research has been "done" on children. Research into starting school is but one example, where children have been observed, tested and assessed at various points, as a means of evaluating their adjustment to the school environment. The Starting School Research Project aims…

The cultural contexts of home, school and community all have important parts to play in the music education of children, but at present in Australia, these three entities are insufficiently connected on a number of fronts, not the least being an understanding about the purpose(s) of young people's engagement with music. This paper puts forward two…

Knowledge management in organizations, the learning objects paradigm, the advent of a new web generation, and the "Semantic Web" are major actual trends that reveal a potential for a renewed distance learning pedagogy. First and foremost is the use of educational modelling languages and instructional engineering methods to help decide…

Efforts to ensure that graduates leave university with the skills needed for career wide lifelong learning have been the focus of much activity at universities both nationally and internationally for over a decade. In this paper, we describe three projects aimed at developing student skills as part of the discipline content in line with current…

The authors describe various methods of measuring a principal's leadership behavior. They have developed a new survey instrument that can be used to analyze the leadership behavior/style of a principal. The instrument consists of 49 positive and negative behaviors that measure how a principal interacts with staff in the following five leadership…

A sample of 15-year-old children in London were interviewed with regard to their vocational wishes, the reasons for these, their plans for preparatory study or training, and relevant aspects of their school experience. Considerable overlap was found between the constructs underlying occupational wishes and liking or disliking for school subjects,…

A follow-up study built on a 1980 study which compared the self-concept of 86 rural Appalachian sixth graders with 80 urban non-Appalacian sixth graders using the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale; then the rural Appalachian sample scored significantly lower in general self-concept and on four self-concept clusters. Where the original…

This paper reviews a New Haven, Connecticut school intervention project as a model for replication in other schools. The functions of a school advisory committee, parent participation, a mental health team, and a social skills curriculum are described as the principal components of the project. The need for preservice as well as inservice training…