This book presents for discussion principles and issues that encourage early childhood educators to evaluate their current approaches to programming and planning for young chidren with emphasis on the individual child. The book offers the opportunity to affirm the practice of developmentally appropriate procedures and to suggest directions for…

This paper describes findings of a study that examined several dimensions of school functions--policy making, decision making, structure building, and relation building--to determine how they contributed to or hindered the development of a caring culture in a suburban middle school in a large midwestern city. The study also examined four arenas or…

The broader social issues (poverty, illiteracy, health care, single parent families) of school reform in urban settings are explored in a paper divided into four parts. The first examines the impact of urbanization on the conditions of schools in the inner city. Part two analyzes the value assumptions embedded in both the first and second waves of…

It is commonplace for school restructuring proposals to mention the need for support programs and services that will address barriers to students' learning and performance. This paper explores some concerns about prevailing policies that address impediments to learning (including but not limited to school violence and substance abuse). Emphasized…

This paper describes how a predominantly white elementary school responded to a school-district reorganization effort to promote ethnic balance among the schools. The redistricting plan reassigned some former students to other schools and bused in many Spanish-speaking students. The school staff encountered language problems with the new students…

This digest provides a framework for professional development of outdoor educators. Outdoor and environmental educators share similar principles of outdoor learning. Thus, the performance standards recently drafted by the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) can serve as a useful guide for outdoor education generally.…

This monograph considers the prospects for improving teacher engagement in urban schools through professional and organizational reform. Urban education is a special context for teaching, with the complications of social, political, and organizational conditions that make the schools difficult settings. One of the problems is increasing teacher…

This publication is part of a series of monographs on the art of teaching. Each volume, focusing on a specific discipline, explores theory in the context of teaching strategies connected to evaluation of both teachers' and students' learning. Three techniques for making use of the series are offered: dialogues (as self-evaluation and in study…

Despite the critical failure of many urban schools to educate poor children and children of color, there are examples of schools and teachers who help students meet challenging academic standards in a supportive, culturally responsive, and empowering context. This paper represents one such success story of a teacher's efforts to nurture his…

Socioemotional processes of learning interaction during classroom teaching and learning were analyzed. The learning interaction was organized according to the principles of a cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown, and Newman, 1989) and applied to the technologically rich learning environment. The purpose of the learning task was to…

As part of litigation challenging the equity and adequacy of school funding in Alabama, educational resources and school conditions were examined in the highest and lowest funded school districts in the state. Identification of these districts revealed that all eight of the highest funded districts were urban systems, while all eight of the lowest…

The District of Columbia public schools sought to obtain an index of "customer satisfaction" from its parents through a study designed to examine their perceptions of their children's schools and school experiences. A survey was developed and pilot tested to ensure content validity and reliability. The survey focused on five areas: (1)…

Although some research data support the view that a "caring learning community" is important to student outcomes, there is a lack of literature describing the administrative behaviors that create such a community. This paper describes findings of a study that identified the behaviors used by teachers to create a caring learning…

This document consists of the issues of a 1996 newsletter on women students, teachers, and administrators in higher education. Each issue includes feature articles, news on higher education, profiles of significant people in the field, and job announcements. The issues' main articles concern: (1) a successful campaign to increase female…

Describing the goals for student equity developed by California's Cypress College, this Plan provides data on outcomes and projections for each goal through 1997 and strategies to be undertaken to meet those goals. Following an executive summary, introduction, and time line of student equity activities from April 1993 to spring 1995, data are…