The philosophy known as Total Quality Management (TQM) is frequently presented as a way to change and improve public education. This issue of "Focus in Change" examines Deming's original 14 TQM points and their application to education. Myron Tribus lays out the core philosophy of the movement and discusses its possible application to…

This chapter, from a guide for designing, implementing, and evaluating instruction and services for students with disabilities, acquaints the education administrator with the what, why, and how of interagency collaboration. System-level interagency collaboration involves joint planning, joint implementation, and joint evaluation between…

This final report of the Wisconsin Family-Centered Inservice Project describes the development, testing, implementation, and evaluation of an interdisciplinary inservice course for early interventionists and parents. The inservice course focused on attitudes, knowledge, and skills in four principal topic areas: (1) family-centered care, (2)…

New Mexico CURRENTS is an ongoing project that provides teams of educators from 11 elementary and secondary schools with culturally relevant humanities content and technical assistance in curriculum development and methodology. After being immersed in a rich knowledge base of New Mexican arts and humanities, the educator teams are expected to…

This staff training package was produced to complement a curriculum framework for assisting students with severe physical disabilities to make the transition to adulthood. The package is based partially on the experiences of a team from the North Nottinghamshire College of Further Education in England. Part 1 explores the concept of transition to…

Research on leadership for change should focus more on what leaders do and less on who the key leaders are. This study identifies a set of change leadership functions, including providing and selling a vision of change, obtaining resources, providing encouragement and recognition, adapting standard operating procedures, monitoring the improvement…

This study conducted a literature review concerning the use of teacher collaboration as a problem-solving process intended to provide educational services to students at risk and with disabilities. Various types of resistance to collaborative service delivery were grouped in the following categories: knowledge, skills, and training perceptions of…

This paper addresses issues and the viability of applying participatory management (PM) to education, with focus on Total Quality Management (TQM). Following a description of PM techniques with an TQM focus and a historical overview of Deming's management theory, four stages of team growth experienced during the implementation process are…

Instructional methods that seek to promote learning through student cooperation, rather than competition, are discussed in this handbook. Sections include an outline of the characteristics of cooperative learning techniques; a summary of research on the effects of cooperative learning on academic achievement, ethnic relations, mainstreaming, and…

This training guide is intended as an aid for agencies and professionals in creating interagency efforts to provide comprehensive care to children and youth with serious emotional disorders and their families. It is not a generic concept but a specific approach to providing care. Section I addresses the key assumptions that undergird the model,…

The problems of collaboration take on new shapes and meanings when writing/composing moves into the visual realm. This claim is based on our experiences working with the Bush-Hewlett Grant Project at Spelman College, which was designed to foster collaboration through the building of course-based Web sites. Our study analyzes three sites, and the…

Previous work has identified a lack of focused research in the field of team working in university continuing education (UCE). However, teamwork could be seen as self-evident in UCE, in part because UCE is of interest to employees, employers, universities and society. The aim of this study is to "describe" teamwork in UCE at three…

This paper reviews design teaching at a total of 15 chemical engineering departments across Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The emphasis is on the capstone Design Project, which can be viewed as a major transition subject for students as they move into the workplace. The study shows that this subject has evolved to act as an…

The changes required by many school reform policies address problems that are extremely difficult to clarify, with organizational and environmental factors densely intertwined. Accordingly, this document begins by identifying the "four C's" that must be taken into account if any strategy for school improvement is to succeed: complexity,…

This digest familiarizes counselors with the four major types of child maltreatment: neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse and exploitation, and emotional abuse or neglect. A definition is provided for each, along with relevant symptoms and statistics. The subsequent discussion focuses on identifying maltreatment and on counseling abused children.…