The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA 2004) continues to mandate that behavior interventions and behavior supports be monitored for proper implementation, and data gathered to prove implementation fidelity and student outcomes. The current implementation of behavior support plans (BSPs) is another type of…

Online learning communities supporting educator professional development are increasingly emerging and a growing body of research suggests that these communities may have the potential to improve professional practice. Effective online learning communities enable teachers to engage in collaborative learning, focus on improving learning outcomes,…

This research addresses best practices for recruiting students at small graduate schools. Best practice is a management term defined as the most efficient and effective way of accomplishing a task. While popular techniques can promote student enrollment, the actual practices and how they are carried out can be varied and unique at each school. For…

Policy and procedure haven't kept up with institutional practices at community colleges. With over 5.5 million college students taking online courses, 29% of college students are taking an online course. As student numbers taking online courses have increased, so have the number of faculty teaching online. The purpose of this study is to…

This study examined motivators for and barriers encountered by non-traditional adult students in their efforts to access, persist in, and succeed in obtaining higher education. It surveyed four-year institutions to examine the extent to which different categories of four-year institutions are meeting adult students' needs and thereby…

The public higher education economic and competitive environments make it crucial that organizations react to the circumstances and make better use of available resources (Duderstadt, 2000; Floyd, 2008; Shulman, 2007; State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), 2009). Viewing higher education through the perspective of new institutionalism…

Distance education is enabling individuals to earn college and graduate degrees, professional certificates, and a wide range of skills and credentials. In addition to the expanding role of distance learning in higher education, all types of organizations now offer web-based training courses to employees, clients, and other associates. In this…

Massive open online courses (MOOC's) are the latest development in online education. Over the past decade, millions of students have taken free online versions of existing courses at well-known universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but such courses often offered little more than reading lists and lecture notes. MOOC's are…

This paper is a review of current practice in narrative therapy with a focus on how it is attractive and useful for therapists who wish to work for social justice. The authors describe narrative therapy's roots in poststructuralist philosophy and social science. They illustrate its major theoretical constructs, including the "narrative metaphor,"…

In this article, the author discusses the transformative power of care. In the interest of achieving some modicum of clarity, the author begins with a definition of the word "care." For each of the different school constituencies, there exist categories of actions through which educators demonstrate care. Broadly, these categories include:…

School librarians help train students to be effective acquirers, evaluators, and users of ideas and information--a necessary skill for survival in the information-rich society. From this stance, school librarians are definitely caregivers. But the author argues that this does not get to the heart of the matter: Librarianship usually translates…

The usefulness of the dictionary as a reliable source of information for word meanings, spelling, and pronunciation is widely recognized. But even in these obvious matters, the information that the dictionary has to offer is not always accurately interpreted. With respect to pronunciation there seem to be two general pitfalls: (1) the…

If our schools were a research project, we'd say that while some aspects of our schools are highly valid, our overall academic systems aren't reliable. If educators are to meet the challenge of leaving no child behind, schools will have to improve with much greater reliability. In the mid-1990s, a group of British secondary schools decided to work…

Although best practices in student instruction and learning have evolved dramatically over the past couple of decades, new approaches to educator professional development have lagged behind considerably. The traditional whole group, one-size-fits-all strategy universally recognized as ineffective for teaching students, has too-long remained the…

From the early 1990s to present, the practice of cohort-based learning has been on the rise in colleges, universities, organizations, and even some K-12 programs across the nation. This type of learning model uses the power of the interpersonal relationships to enhance the learning process and provide additional support to the cohort members as…