Improving leadership development opportunities among those likely to ascend to the principalship is a particularly effective policy response to reform advocates. But the school district level requires a deeper understanding of the individual personality preferences and leadership styles of those preparing to apply for the next round of…

Throughout this era of greater educational accountability, assessment researchers have argued that large-scale comparative assessment data can enhance learning within and across systems of education and can foster reforms based on the practices of high achieving jurisdictions. Other researchers are less optimistic, warning that educational reform…

The National Policy Board of Educational Administration reflects the belief that principals should be taught processes for experimenting and learning from real world data to meet the challenges of the work environment. This study of practicing principals yielded a content analysis of 482 responses, which reflect the need for principals to…

The boot camp model became a correctional panacea for juvenile offenders during the early 1990s, promising the best of both worlds--less recidivism and lower operating costs. Although there have been numerous studies of boot camp programs since that time, most have relied on nonrandomized comparison groups. The California Youth Authority's (CYA's)…

Encouraging skills development is a key part of the UK Government's strategy. This emphasis on skills has led to changes in Higher Education, where there is an increasing recognition of the need to enhance students' employability. This paper reviews the data on the type of employer skill needs available in the existing literature with a particular…

This article outlines BPRS funded investigations into my own school's and other establishments' practices and processes within data analysis, needs identification and tracking of children's academic progress. It describes the evaluation of my school's then current practices and policies and the use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews…

The authors analyzed student data from the U.S. Department of Education's "Annual Reports to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" to asses patterns and trends in the educational placement of students with emotional or behavioral disorders (E/BD), as well as their means of school exit and the…

In spite of the growing body of research on loneliness, the relationship between the phenomena of loneliness and boredom has not been sufficiently addressed, especially in respect to children. The question, "How does the child's experience of boredom stand phenomenologically in relation to the experience of loneliness?" is explored from a…

This article discusses educational inequalities within the territorial context of Spain, and more particularly in the autonomous community of Catalonia. The analysis, which takes a comparative international approach, looks at the question from two points of view. First, from the angle of students, an analysis is made of the impact produced by…

Following two-failed school bond issues in 1995 and 1998, one mid-sized rural school district organized an effort that led to two successful school bond elections in 2001 and 2003. The school district's strategic plan mirrored many of the recommendations for successful bond referendums published in School Bond Success: A Strategy for Building…

This paper examines a non-equivalent quasi-experimental research effort, wherein two versions of a two week Project Based Learning unit were developed, implemented, and assessed. Students used a collaborative GIS or paper maps to support data analysis activities in this eighth grade Earth science unit. Attitude and self-efficacy in science as…

To explore the impact of the communication medium on building common ground, this article presents research comparing learner use of reception strategies in traditional face-to-face (FTF) and in synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). Reception strategies, such as reprises, hypothesis testing and forward inferencing provide evidence of…

Background/context: Professional development is an important element of professional practice and teachers are expected to engage in activities that not only improve practice but also have a positive impact on pupil learning. Physical educators worldwide have acknowledged the need to improve the continuing education of teachers and have called…

"Personalised learning" and the value of national assessment data in achieving it have been identified by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills as essential for raising educational standards. Employing multilevel analysis, this paper compares children's end of primary school (Key Stage 2) test scores with those they achieved…

Last fall, "Science and Children" invited kindergarten to grade eight teachers to participate in a study investigating students' ideas about plants and plant growth (Barman et al. 2002). Two hundred twenty-seven individuals from 16 states in the United States, one U.S. Territory, and one Canadian Province responded to this invitation and…