This article describes the meaning of empowerment and collaboration, how they can be instituted, and the benefits that can result from them. Empowerment of teachers is a necessary ingredient of school improvement. Administrators who empower teachers grant them "the autonomy to make decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment." In this…

A major northeastern land-grant university has been engaged in preparing vocational technical (now career and technical) teachers through a baccalaureate degree program for 79 years. However, one of the most frequently asked questions during meetings with prospective students and their parents is, "What does one do with a degree from this…

Since the classical authors of the nineteenth century, the explanation of macro-social phenomena has been considered as the essential epistemic achievement, hence the "raison d'etre," of comparative analysis in the social sciences. In practice, however, the claims of comparative social enquiry for providing convincing explanations are…

The author will attempt to demonstrate that the concept of culture is no longer appropriate for describing present-day cultural diversity. Indeed, cultures can no longer be understood as independent entities, but need to be contextualized in terms of social, political and communication-based realities. When contemplating cultural pluralism, it is…

The notion of competence has received sustained and ongoing critical attention. Despite this, many important matters remain unclear. This article argues that much of the confusion can be traced to both proponents and opponents of competence variously sharing highly questionable assumptions about learning that revolve around viewing it as a…

Immigrant children can find it especially difficult to establish their place in the classroom community. As children of immigrants, the authors have experienced, first hand, the difficulties that one faces when placed in a new culture and have seen how this aspect of their backgrounds affects them and their families. Consequently, they created…

Many forms of literacy exist. Each literacy is an integration of ways of thinking, acting, interacting, and valuing. To understand the impact of agriculture (i.e., farming, ranching, forestry, and fisheries) and the contributions and interactions to the environment (e.g., losses of biological diversity, soil degradation, air and water pollution,…

The present study aims to explore the role of Chinese EFL learners' rhetorical strategy use in relation to their achievement in English writing in Taiwan. It has been argued that traditional Chinese text structures (indirect style) continue to influence the contemporary English writing of Chinese students in expository writing text. The manner of…

In this study we argue that narrative storytelling and expository discussion, as 2 distinct discourse genres, differ both in linguistic expression and in their underlying principles of organization--schema-based in narratives and category-based in exposition. Innovative analyses applied to 160 personal-experience narratives and expository essays…

The authors investigated what and how instructional practices are related to students' motivation and performance in writing. The participants were 6 teacher interns and their (N = 209) secondary-school students in Hong Kong. In a 3-session instruction unit, the teacher interns taught their students how to write an expository essay. The students…

Moral text processing was used as an ecologically valid method for assessing implicit and explicit moral understanding and development. The authors tested undergraduates, seminarians, and graduate students in political science and philosophy for recall of moral narratives and moral expository texts. Multivariate analyses of covariance using…

This paper focuses first on the educator, Ralph W. Tyler, who serves as a model and ideal for curriculum development and implementation. The paper states that in 1949, Tyler, in creating a syllabus, created a small book of 128 pages, and in so doing, he set a benchmark in the field of education. The paper then provides an extended syllabus for a…

In an effort to provide students with instruction in academic writing early in their college careers, a project was undertaken to link a developmental composition course to an introductory psychology course at Washington's Bellevue College. The two professors designed a sequence of four papers offering practice in two of the more common academic…

Timed writing exercises used at the University of the Ryukyus (Japan) to help alleviate common problems in English second language writing are described. It is proposed that Japanese students have difficulty writing in English because of early training in the grammar-translation method, a lack of communication skills, the overuse of bilingual…

National Writing Project reports show that writing process institutes and workshops have effected some positive changes in attitudes toward personal writing. The many teacher-written articles appearing in professional journals attest to the use and benefits of personal writing in the classroom. Nevertheless, there is still no evidence that…