Discusses current models of family-professional partnerships and barriers to true collaboration, including turf issues, the nature of trust, expertise differences, and differences in scope of responsibility. Offers recommendations for practice, including questions for self-evaluation. Asserts that as educators change their practice and ways of…

Caught up in the entrepreneurial thrill of launching a new industry, high-school students in an economically distressed fishing village in Maine are playing a vital research-and-development role in partnership with their community. The result is a sophisticated aquaculture center for raising several species of fish in a laboratory setting. (MLH)

Does varsity sports participation impart valuable skills? Using height as a participation instrument, a study of High School and Beyond data shows that sports participation negatively affects white male students' educational attainment, positively affects black male students' educational attainment and earnings, and positively affects white female…

For African American students, matriculation at a predominantly White institution of higher education can be quite intimidating. Religion is important in providing comfort and encouragement for many of these students. This article describes the Afro-American gospel choir at the University of Alabama and its role in providing a more positive campus…

The present study was designed to investigate the relationships between role strains following the transition to secondary school and academic achievement. Academic engagement was hypothesized to mediate between role strain and achievement. The sample consisted of 749 students in their first year of secondary school. Four types of role strain were…

A U.S. Department of Education study shows that the average 12th-grade African-American student is reading and doing math at around the level of the average 8th-grade white or Asian student. Hispanic students are about as far behind. Both African-Americans and Hispanic college students obtain diplomas at half the rate of white or Asian students.…

As the continuing medical education (CME) enterprise evolved over the last half century, a variety of rules, national and state regulations, and reporting requirements developed, with a resultant substantial variation in what is required of a physician. That CME needs fundamental reform is not news to those who read the literature. Yet many of the…

Courtesy of new technologies, such as student information systems (SIS), districts are opening new channels of communication, giving parents anytime Internet access to information they need to track their child's progress--and affording them the opportunity to make a tremendous impact on their child's learning growth. Take what is happening at…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a secondary content-specific methods course and student teaching on preservice teacher efficacy. The study employed a single-group pretest-posttest 1-posttest 2 design. The repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated no significant change in overall teacher efficacy from the…

With an increasingly international student body in universities all over the world, there is growing contact between teachers and students from different cultures. This chapter brings cultural issues to a more conscious and explicit level so they may be examined in the light of teacher authenticity.

This chapter describes how Tallahassee Community College used CCSSE data as part of its overall student-retention program, consisting of faculty workshops, analysis of state accountability data, and conscious incorporation of best practices. The resulting Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) meets accreditation requirements and strengthens the college's…

This article demonstrates a novel application of propensity score matching techniques: to estimate nonexperimental impacts on program participants within the context of an experimental research design. The author examines the relationship between program participation, defined as qualifying for an earnings supplement by working full-time, and…

Individual educational plans (IEPs) are considered to be more effective when designed and implemented by a multidisciplinary team. This paper deals with the IEP as a collaborative tool for the education of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). Ten pupils with PMLD and the people working around them (e.g. teacher, speech…

This ethnographic study of high school students' classroom practices and perceptions about participation reveals the extent to which students' perceptions determine their understandings of practice, even when these understandings conflict with researcher observations and the bulk of the literature on gender and participation. This study shows,…

Team building activities are an excellent way to challenge students and teach them the critical communication and problem solving skills that encourage trust, empathy, and ability to work together. They create an atmosphere that enhances the ability to meet fitness and skill goals because students, regardless of skill level, will possess increased…