The proliferation of information on the Internet introduces new challenges for educators. Although the Internet can provide quick and easy access to a wealth of information, it has virtually no quality control. Consequently, the Internet has rendered faculty more essential than ever as teachers of the analytic and evaluative skills students need…

The article considers Ghanaian folk songs as a training ground for music and social skill development. The U.S. is in cultural transition. Such changes have brought about reforms in educational policy including how teachers and school boards address ethnic diversity. The music of Africa is as diverse as its geography and its numerous ethnic…

Eight experienced Chinese language arts teachers from a typical junior high school in Taiwan participated in this study to discuss the potential uses of information and communications technologies (ICT) in Chinese language arts instruction. After meeting for 12 roundtable sessions and using a web forum as a supplement for exchanging ideas, they…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pathways of entrepreneurial career development and the processes involved for women to become entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. Women entrepreneurs were studied to gain an understanding of why women chose self-employment and how local enterprise programs should be designed to benefit them. The study…

This article introduces an innovative approach to teaching texts at every level of the foreign language curriculum through the use of an interactive reading journal. The article describes how the journal can address the interpretive communication standard at the secondary level, as well as the challenges of integrating lower-level "skills" courses…

Teachers today face increasing demands to ensure their students achieve high levels of literacy. They may feel overwhelmed by the challenges of teaching reading comprehension strategies that foster the integration, interpretation, critique, and evaluation of text ideas. The challenges are compounded because students of diverse backgrounds often…

Employers often consider graduates to be unprepared for employment and lacking in vocational skills. A common demand from them is that the curriculum should include "communication skills," as specific skills in their own right and also because of the central role that such skills can play in developing other desirable attributes. Current thinking…

Historically, specialized schools for the blind were the only options for educational programming available to students with visual impairments. Throughout the 19th century and into the mid-20th century, the instruction in specialized schools consisted primarily of the core curriculum or academic areas (Zebehazy & Whitten, 1998). Current…

This is an inductive case study of a European-American fourth-grade girl who struggled with print-based aspects of literacy. The study highlights her multiple levels of competency as she participated over time in a heterogeneous literature discussion group that read and responded to three culturally diverse novels. Data include 27 audio-taped…

Despite the many studies of student departure, colleges and universities continue to face difficulties in retaining underrepresented student populations. The authors argue that contemporary social integration and multicultural theories of student retention theory do not adequately address the academic needs of underrepresented students of color.…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is apprenticeship for real-life problem solving, helping students acquire the knowledge and skills required in the workplace. Although the acquisition of knowledge and skills makes it possible for performance to occur, without self-efficacy the performance may not even be attempted. I examined how student…

Group counseling has been used with a wide range of people who have physical disorders including psychosomatic conditions, sensory (visual and auditory) disabilities, neuromuscular and orthopedic impairments, and life-threatening diseases. The needs and concerns of these people can be generally delineated as physical, psychological, social,…

The purpose of this study was to assess fourth- and fifth-grade students' (9- and 10-year-olds') affective response and ability to discriminate between melody and improvisation after receiving instruction in singing and/or playing a piece in the blues style. Subjects (N= 102) were assigned to one of three equal-sized groups. Group 1 learned to…

Faculty at The University of Akron Wayne College, the two-year regional branch campus of the University of Akron, developed and implemented a plan to assess student learning in 1997. The plan was based on an embedded outcomes model, linking course-level student learning outcomes to program outcomes for each of six technical associate degree…

Higher education is influenced significantly by regional and disciplinary accrediting organizations. Regional accrediting organizations accredit entire institutions, while disciplinary accreditors approve programs within those institutions. All accrediting organizations require institutions and programs to examine their educational effectiveness…