The Manhattan, Kansas, public school system made a concerted effort to improve an already effective school system. The IDEA School Improvement Program provided training and materials to members of the school community to facilitate team and skill building. (JOW)

Summarizes the Carnegie Foundation president's September 1987 speech concerning this generations's most urgent task--rebuilding the nation's schools. Warns that today's teachers may have gained in competency and responsibility, but not in empowerment to shape curricula, plan inservice programs, or shape student retention and special education…

As head of Brazil's literacy campaign, educator Paulo Freire discovered that overwhelming student apathy required restructuring his values toward empowering instead of controlling students. For education to be linked to progress at an individual level, curriculum must emanate partly from the learners' lives. Includes five references. (MLH)

This article reviews some problems and concerns of older Americans and specific considerations facing community education if it is to be a feasible delivery system for providing educational opportunities for older adults. (JOW)

Argumentation skills are frequently touted as archetypal tools of democratic empowerment, yet theorization of ways to use such tools to achieve concrete social change is rare. As a result, the emancipatory "telos" anchoring American academic policy debate tends to gallop ahead of practical efforts to build empowerment through the debate…

This paper reports on an ongoing process of identifying and meeting the professional needs of faculty in higher education environmental programs in the United States. It includes the self-reported strengths and weaknesses of environmental studies programs and the analysis of them by Kormondy, Corcoran, and Tchen (1997). It contains a descriptive…

This issue of the "Early Childhood Bulletin" consists of excerpts from a speech given by Dr. Robert Davila, Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, during an Interagency Coordinating Council (ICC) Parents Meeting, September 1991, in Arlington, Virginia. In his speech, Dr. Davila calls for…

This participant's manual presents materials for a national conference (May 2002) on youth leadership development within organizations of disabled individuals. Introductory material includes the conference agenda, information about the trainers, and information about the sponsoring organizations, the Independent Living Research Utilization Program…

East Asia is the region which has experienced unprecedented growth in the past few decades. This growth resulted in the increase in education opportunities and the empowerment of women. Modernization and globalization provided opportunities for many women in China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. Modern Asian women can obtain…

Selected and crafted from presentationsn at the Second World Congress of the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA) held in Brisbane, Australia, July 1995, the essays in this book tell stories of using drama and theatre in a broad range of cultural contexts, but all with the same aim of real-life enfranchisement. The…

This study examined possible relationships between teachers' perceived levels of empowerment in the workplace, teachers' perceived levels of responsibility for student learning, and levels of student success as measured by standardized achievement tests. Participants were a group of elementary classroom teachers from the southwest Missouri area…

Issues involved in empowering evaluation conducted with grass-roots organizations are discussed. One major issue centers on conflicting evaluation standards evaluators and stakeholders may have, and another is whether there is harmony between the empowerment model's goals of evaluation ownership and group advocacy. (SLD)

Analysis of data from 270 families participating in Michigan's "Early On" (Part H of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) program suggests two paths for empowering families: (1) implementation of program components via a family-centered framework or (2) family-centered delivery to build a family support network. (Author/DB)

A remote Australian town's initiative to develop an Internet cafe was based on a foundation of community empowerment and capacity building. The project's failure illustrates factors that inhibit community control: overstretched local resources, failure to understand impact on existing social infrastructure and social networks, and lack of…

Applies optimistic and pessimistic models of government/community partnerships to the situation of Muintir na Tire, the Irish community movement. Recommends an activist model that focuses on the ability of community interests to assert collective agency and negotiate more advantageous partnerships. (Contains 28 references.) (SK)