In spring 1986, Lincoln Land Community College (LLCC) initiated a program to provide part-time, off-campus instructors with the professional support required to improve teaching effectiveness. The plan involved training 14 "master teachers" to function as evaluators of part-time, off-campus instructors. Master teachers have a minimum of 5 years of…

The guiding principles of developmentally appropriate early childhood education are examined, along with pertinent research, concrete examples, and implications for practice. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to recent trends in early childhood education. Chapter 2 considers the principle of matching early childhood education practices to…

The fourth-year update of a longitudinal study examined the progress of the 31 remaining members of 2 classes in the first cohort of a Spanish immersion program and their standard-program monolingual comparison group of 15 students. Achievement gains were measured on standardized tests of mathematics and language skills. Results provided new…

Emerging theories suggest that learning is contingent on cognitive development, which is, in turn, influenced by conative and ecological factors. These three domains--cognitive, conative, and ecological--all make important contributions to understanding student achievement. Their collective influences should be understood when formulating an…

The question in English-As-Second-Language (ESL) classrooms is not whether a teaching method is good or not, but whether the teacher knows how, for what purpose, for what kind of students, and in what language situation a particular method is used to enhance learning effectively. In teaching English to Chinese students at Xi'an Foreign Language…

Originally designed as a vehicle for presenting all arguments regarding the creation of a community college system in Utah, "Focus" currently seeks to promote originality, innovation, and needed changes in the state's two-year colleges. The 1991 issue of this annual journal includes the following articles: (1) "Access, Quality and…

This four-part volume addresses design principles for introducing democratic forms in workplaces, educational institutions, and social institutions, based on a trend toward participative democracy in Australia. Following an introduction, part I sets the context with two papers: "The Agenda for the Next Wave" and "Educational…

This paper argues that the current debate over humanities curricula has failed to articulate a vision for humanities education because it has turned on a liberal/conservative axis. It also contends that educators must stop debating elite versus democratic values or traditional versus contemporary problems in humanities education, and start…

Drawing from the literature on reading research and theories, this paper discusses the problems of community college students with severe reading/writing deficits, reviews the advantages and limitations of various approaches to reading instruction, and suggests a new method of word decoding. First, the paper explores the difficulties facing the…

This overview of the literature on teaching, learning, and assessment was prepared to help develop a shared understanding by educators, researchers, and students to inform subsequent research conducted by the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) into the National Certificate in Scotland. Section 1 serves as an introduction to the…

Because of its ability to record and represent process, the computer can provide a powerful, motivating, and as yet untapped tool for focusing the students' attention directly on their own thought processes and learning through reflection. Properly abstracted and structured, the computational medium can capture the processes by which a novice or…

The Winthrop College Critical Issues Symposium for freshmen is discussed, with attention to the format of the seminar, the theoretical bases, seminar goals, strategies employed, administrative and political factors, faculty development opportunities, and assessment. The symposium is designed to help freshmen become active learners, questioners,…

The application of behavioral and cognitive learning theories to the design of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) at the college level is discussed. A model of instructional design and the unique qualities of computers are also briefly reviewed. The general model of instruction, which is used for designing a curriculum, has five major components:…

According to the ACT theory of skill acquisition, cognitive skills are encoded by a set of productions, which are organized according to a hierarchical goal structure. People solve problems in new domains by applying weak problem-solving procedures to declarative knowledge they have about this domain. From these initial problem solutions,…

A two-year ethnographic study of kindergarteners' experiences in a French immersion classroom focused on the processes by which children find and construct meaning through classroom interaction and communication processes. Data were gathered through classroom observation and videotapes. The initially unilingual English-speaking students were…