This module, written for middle school students in grades 5-8, is oriented toward informing students about environmental issues in relation to their own health and well-being. It is deliberately focused on a few issues that will interest young adolescents, and is not intended to be comprehensive. The six lessons stress individual action and…

The technical reports and working papers published by the Center for Children and Technology that are listed in this guide focus on educational technology and its relationship to student learning and school restructuring. Technical reports share research results, describe prototype designs, and address issues crucial to the Center's research…

Designed to identify teaching-learning strategies that can be facilitated by the use of technology and to specify factors and configurations that have impact on computer use in the classroom, this second-year study of computer use in Indiana schools focused on the effects of computer use on students and on teachers, the curriculum implications of…

Results from an ethnographic study reveal the meanings and social actions of teachers and administrators that were used to support a teachers' theory of empowerment. This practitioner's model offers a definition, principles, and behaviors that reflect teacher empowerment as it occurs in the school. Implications of this model for building…

This report is a descriptive summary of preliminary findings from the second year of research in 16 secondary schools in California and Michigan conducted by the Center for Research on the Context of Secondary Teaching (CRC). Further analyses of the data will proceed over the year and will be informed by comments of teachers, administrators, and…

Previous research has examined whether manipulation of one environmental element, such as sound, significantly affected group norms for achievement. This investigation examined the relation of preferred and actual acoustic environment on reading performance. Subjects were 32 male and 32 female sixth-graders from a suburban school in New York State…

In 1985 the Arizona Legislature established a 5-year pilot-test program for teachers, under the direction of the Joint Legislative Committee on Career Ladders. Its purpose was to implement and evaluate a process of rewarding teachers based on their actual performance levels, rather than solely on years of experience and/or accumulated college…

Massachusetts law enables the Board of Education to award grants to school committees for school-based comprehensive health education and human services programs, including the following components: comprehensive health education curriculum, school counseling and psychological services, school health services, coordination of school and community…

School reform efforts today have a personal focus that emphasizes attending to the problems faced by individual at-risk students. After outlining the impact of student dropouts, this document uses information from a review of 150 at-risk student programs described in related professional literature to describe six basic weaknesses in current…

Scheduling concerns such as how to keep instructors teaching in the areas for which they are qualified and how to allow for elective offerings in a student's schedule led North Cache Middle School, a year-round education school serving grades 8 and 9 in Richmond, Utah, to explore a number of solutions. Seven solutions are examined along with…

The document describes desirable practices for the education of gifted early adolescents in Virginia. It contains recommendations to assist in implementing a comprehensive plan for gifted middle-grade students compatible with state plans for overall middle school education. Research on students this age and on gifted students is cited to support…

Papers on women in linguistics are presented in five groups. An introductory section contains: "Feminist Linguistics: A Whirlwind Tour"; "Women in Linguistics: The Legacy of Institutionalization"; "Reflections on Women in Linguistics"; and "The Structure of the Field and Its Consequences for Women." Papers on trends and data include: "The Status…

This four-part guide is designed to help community college instructors understand and respond to individual differences in their students. First, the preface lays out a framework for an in-depth examination of individual learning differences by posing the following questions: (1) Is learning a single function or a composite of different types of…

As a Department of Defense contractor providing associate degree programs to U.S. service members in Europe, Central Texas College Europe Campus (CTCEC) is currently facing the challenge of becoming a more adaptive institution. The college must contend with an imminent enrollment decline produced by the reduction of U.S. military personnel…

This study sought to identify the factors that affect the retention of black students. The survey responses of 90 randomly selected black college students from two predominantly white southern public universities were analyzed. Both institutions are under court order to desegregate. The following summary findings are reported: (1) participants…