Considers certain aspects of independent school life that obstruct communication between parents, students, teachers, and administrators. Attempts to define what a good school is and what parents should expect to be getting for their investment in a child's education. (Author/RK)

Determined whether teachers come to the teaching situation with certain expectations for students and whether these expectations differ with respect to race, social class, and academic history of the child. The data were accumulated from 160 white female education majors recruited from three midwestern universities who were given the task of…

Setting high standards will not cause excellent student performance. Standards must be set for the everyday work teachers expect of students. Work-design standards are needed to protect students from pointless teacher-generated work. Greater coherence and focus for learning will occur if secondary schools are designed backward from worthy tasks…

When thousands of library patrons share the same workstation, Web browser bookmarks fall short of patrons' and librarians' expectations. One way to direct patrons to useful and appropriate Web sites is to create a MARC record for the home page. Explains how to create MARC records and raises questions to consider before adding Internet addresses to…

Examines how child caregivers can shape parents' expectations of child care through written and visual materials. Includes suggestions for writing notes to parents, focusing on characteristics of good parent notes. Provides excerpts from sample notes and lists nine sources of parent/program conflict, including biting and child aggression, outdoor…

Used Visual Expectation Paradigm to describe information processing changes and individual differences during first year of life. Found regular age changes in mean reaction time and variability but not in minimum reaction time, suggesting that growth rate of sensory-detection information is constant during first year but age changes occur in level…

Presents three cases of novice teachers and how they make the choice between covering the curriculum and fostering their students' understanding. Recommends that supervisors provide opportunities for their teachers to identify their metaphors and associate them with their beliefs and actions, to make alternate metaphors explicit, and to support…

Investigates a multidimensional approach to perfectionism using three dimensions: self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism. Results based on 178 first-year postsecondary students suggest that both personal standards for academic achievement and appraisals of standards held by significant…

Examined optimism, generalized self-efficacy, and interactions between these variables, along with member expectancies for group, as predictors of growth group outcomes. Results based on student responses (N=19) indicate that the ability of initial expectancies to predict outcome depended on the level of generalized self-efficacy. (RJM)

Examines the work of one urban teacher network, analyzing ideas about educational equity and inequality evolving from its professional development practices. Using archival and ethnographic materials spanning 24 years, the article explores how the network's oral inquiry process makes visible two different, but interrelated ethical obligations…

Identifies myths about the poor, such as attributing poverty to the breakdown of family, and responds to them with arguments from Richard Weissbourd's book "The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do About It." Argues for using professional material like Weissbourd's book to better articulate and…

Studies validity and usefulness of kindergarten through second-grade teacher judgments of students' literacy competency based on alternative assessment techniques. States that 136 kindergarten children were followed through second grade; each year their teachers and principals were interviewed about assessment data for literacy evaluation.…

Explores the relationship between white racial identity attitudes and expectations about counseling. Results indicate men and women differ in their expectations about counseling and their levels of white racial identity attitudes. There was no significant relationship between them, however. Results are examined in relation to previous findings in…

Business students (n=59) used a behavioral expectation scale to rate their own operations management skills at the beginning and end of a course. They evaluated their skills in managing quality, productivity, and responsiveness significantly higher after the course. Critical incidents corroborated the results. (SK)

Argues that colleges need more than new techniques to engage students; they must transform college culture. Stresses that teaching and learning be the main topic of conversation, and that such conversations should be more informed and more information-based. Teaching itself can be viewed as substantive, intellectual work. (RJM)