Case studies of five rural Nebraska communities identified why some rural communities have survived economic trends stemming from the worst agricultural economic crisis since the Great Depression, while others seem to have surrendered. Background information on each community was gathered from available state, federal, and private information…

This report documents the second of two studies on teaching and learning generic skills in high schools. It extends the earlier work by providing a model for designing classroom instruction in both academic and vocational classrooms where teaching generic skills is an instructional goal. Ethnographic field methods were used to observe, record, and…

Ethnography, the preferred method of inquiry of the cultural anthropologist, is currently the most widely recognized qualitative method for research. Defined as the "art and science of describing a group or culture," it provides a means of studying and understanding other groups, their values and culture. This study documents the use of…

To gather data on the goals and effectiveness of a postsecondary program organized from the perspective of multiculturalism, a case study was conducted of Nuevos Horizontes (NH), an immigrant education program at Triton College, in Illinois. NH is designed to facilitate access to higher education for Hispanics and other minority students; provide…

This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after reform impulses in the 20th century aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 90-year period are developed from evidence from a wide variety of sources, including classroom photographs, textbooks and tests used, student recollections,…

This paper explores the patterns of interaction which enhance or inhibit administrators acceptance of their superintendent's agenda. The data were drawn from a case study of a superintendent involved in a change process, through observation and interviews with the superintendent, district administrators, and principals. Implications of the…

This case study used an expanded method for helping student teacher interns examine their interpretation of what it is to be a teacher. Participants were two faculty members and four groups of preservice teachers working in a collegial environment at a small liberal arts college. Students participated in a professional development seminar that…

This study sought to determine if general parent education, in the form of books and workshops, was an effective intervention in cases of moderate parental distress due to difficult child temperament. The parents of six "difficult" children answered questionnaires and were interviewed over several years concerning their child's temperament and its…

This instructor's manual provides an overview of educating human-services workers in British Columbia (Canada) in order to change and understand racism. In addition to exercises that can be used with classes to promote examination of beliefs and values, brief histories of racism in British Columbia and the experiences of specific racial or ethnic…

A unit used in an Australian school to teach English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students how to write a discussion is described. The 3-week unit was planned and implemented jointly by an ESL resource teacher, class teacher, and teacher librarian. The class was divided into three heterogeneous groups, two of which were observed for this study and…

Due to the technological power and high status science is given in our society, educational reform efforts will continue to focus on science education. However, the purpose of science education for a multicultural society remains problematic. The implications of using social constructivism as a referent for science education is discussed,…

This paper describes the theoretical framework that underlies the Teachers as Decision Maker Program (TADMP) at Indiana University and the development of a conceptual framework of seven teacher perspectives. The four components of the theoretical framework guiding both TADMP research and the program itself are pedagogical schemata, professional…

A study evaluated shared learning in educational programs preparing students for employment as nurses, midwives, and health visitor teachers in the United Kingdom. Data were collected from the following: descriptive survey of 17 centers preparing teachers in nursing/midwifery/health visiting (response rate, 12 centers); interviews with course…

Drawing on a 1993 study of four students in a late French immersion program in Australia and findings from a 1991 study, the report looks at three areas: students' response to the learning context, including its more and less helpful characteristics; the experiences students consider most important for learning the language, including those…

COCA, which consists of both authoring tools and a runtime shell, is a system intended to provide teachers with genuine access to intelligent tutoring system (ITS) technology and to give them control over domain material and teaching strategies. To evaluate the effectiveness of COCA, 10 subjects (five university teachers and five school teachers)…