This report presents tabulations for the 2008 Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) conducted by the United States Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences. This First Look summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in 2- and 4-year,…

Resources matter. How well schools and districts use their people, time, and money is often even more important than how much they receive. Education Resource Strategies' extensive research with districts and schools shows that despite differences in school level, size, location, student population, or even instructional focus, high-performing…

The teaching of science has long been viewed as problematic within primary classrooms across Australia. This study explores the teaching of primary science in an area of rural and regional Australia (the New England Region of New South Wales) where small populations, remote settings and isolation can make the teaching of science and other Key…

This quantitative study investigated the degree to which financial resources supporting teachers was equitably distributed in Oklahoma. Teachers are an important resource and their importance is being increasingly emphasized as educators attempt to increase student achievement. Every student educated in Oklahoma should have an equal right to…

With the rapid development of wireless networks and mobile technologies and the increasing adoption of mobile learning, the need for "anywhere, anytime and any device" access to information becomes more evident. This has influenced the design of learning objects. The small but developing literature on vodcasting indicates its potential…

In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009.

The members at the American Federation of Teachers examined each state's and Washington, D.C.'s content standards documents to determine whether or not they contain enough information about what students should learn to provide the basis for coherent curricula and assessments. There is no perfect formula for this; they made a series of judgment…

The eagerly-awaited new edition of the successful "Essential Study Skills" continues to provide a truly practical guide to achieving success at university. Whether you are going to university straight from school, a mature student, or an overseas student studying in the UK for the first time, this is the book that will help you to better…

As the increasing number of Latino and Asian immigrants to the Atlanta area has escalated tensions over occupational, residential, and educational resources, research has begun to examine opposition to bilingual education as an extension of anti-immigrant prejudice and as a measure of perceived threat. This study uses content analysis to compare…

Little is known about the relationship between school characteristics, such as teacher-student ratios, and the risk of incarceration in adulthood. Educational skeptics argue that investment in schools has little effect on outcomes, such as criminality or the risk of incarceration, because criminal propensities are fixed at an early age and…

In today's climate of standardized testing, the author shares his concern that colleagues who are currently implementing researched, inquiry-based science that awaken students' curiosity may soon be thwarted by mandated, time-consuming packaged programs. He encourages science educators to "fight" for inquiry-based science and includes some…

Progress monitoring tools have been shown to be essential elements in current approaches to intervention problem-solving models. Such tools have been valuable not only in marking individual children's level of performance relative to peers but also in measuring change in skill level in a way that can be attributed to intervention and development.…

The article surfaces, examines and draws conclusions on the varying perceptions, expectations and operationalised "realities" of tutor and student behaviour in relation to reading lists. The argument identifies a paucity of literature on reading lists, but, nevertheless, locates a number of potential literature sources with which to…

Since the early 1990s, the central government of China has been gradually privatizing early childhood education. As the main precursor of this large-scale reform in the country, Shenzhen has witnessed several innovative as well as radical changes. The existing public early childhood settings in the city were therefore forced to transform into…

According to van der Pluijm (2006), an ecological community occurs when interacting groups, living in the same area, are joined together by the set of connections. This definition implies a symbiotic relationship and the acknowledgment that what affects one member or part of the community also affects the others. When the interconnections are…