When the League for Innovation in the Community College held its annual technology conference here last week it drew about 2,350 participants, live and in person. People came from 374 colleges around the country and overseas, and listened to faculty members and technology officials discuss new teaching techniques using gadgets like cell phones.…

For almost two years, a major effort has been under way to redistribute responsibility and authority for ensuring academic quality in higher education among the federal government, accreditors, and institutions. The primary target for these efforts has been the community of federally recognized accrediting organizations, and the primary goal has…

Background: Academic self-handicapping refers to the use of impediments to successful performance on academic tasks. Previous studies have shown that it is related to personal achievement goals. A performance goal orientation is a positive predictor of self-handicapping, whereas a task goal orientation is unrelated to self-handicapping. Aims: The…

Growing evidence suggests that lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults may be at elevated risk for mental health and substance use disorders, possibly due to anti-gay stigma. Little of this work has examined putative excess morbidity among ethnic/racial minorities resulting from the experience of multiple sources of discrimination. The authors report…

Drawing on a school ethnography and the voices of graduate students, this paper explores the concept of robust hope with reference to the ideal of social justice in education policy and practice. Although the arguments to support a commitment to social justice in education systems, schools and teacher education programs, are often…

California policy-makers clearly have ambitious goals for arts education. However, beyond developing rigorous standards and calling for instruction in the arts as part of the required course of study, California historically has done little to develop, implement, and sustain comprehensive arts programs that provide all students with access to and…

While many institutions have developed policies to address the myriad needs of Millennial college students and their parents, inherent in many of these initiatives is the underlying assumption that this student population is a homogeneous group. This book is significant because it addresses and explores the characteristics and experiences of…

This report is a follow-up to "Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades" (Williams, Kirst, Haertel, et al., 2010). That study specified a comprehensive set of actionable practices that differentiated higher academic achievement among 303 middle grades schools in California. In doing so, the study provided a compelling and coherent account of…

This is an abridged, summary report of selected findings from "Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in the Improvement of Urban School Districts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress"--a comprehensive study prepared by the Council of the Great City Schools in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and with…

This study investigates the nature and scope of current staff development activities and their relation to better teaching or school improvement in a representative sample of school districts and private schools in Arizona and southern parts of California and Nevada. Findings are based on telephone discussions with 72 administrators in the region.…

Designed for use by public participation coordinators in natural resources planning, this manual provides information to aid in the development of a coordinated planning strategy by defining reasonable program goals and following through by selecting appropriate means and methods. In a discussion of the orientation stages of public involvement…

Native educators from around Alaska contributed to the development of guidelines for cross-cultural orientation programs for educators. The guidelines are organized around various roles related to culturally responsive schooling in Alaska. They encourage schools to strive to be reflections of their communities by incorporating and building upon…

This paper, a summary of a document created for a Master of Arts degree in Interior Design at Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois, discusses research on "wayfinding" and the need for designers and planners to recognize its importance in order to provide more user-friendly environments. Orientation is the first step in…

Findings from a study that determined the extent to which school districts utilized formal new mentoring programs for principals and examined the nature of such programs are presented in this paper. Methodology involved a survey of 40 school districts in a large urban region of southern California, which elicited 23 responses; interviews with the…

This booklet was devised to help Hispanic teenagers develop a life plan. It provides information for making decisions, and is written in both English and Spanish. Tips are provided for setting goals. A sentence-completion task helps the teenager focus on specific issues, and use concrete language when talking about the goals. Specific goals are…