The purpose of this paper is to provide information and insight into how state assessment programs are governed, how individual state and state-consortium assessment programs actually operate, and how key policy and technical decisions on these programs are made. To address these issues, this paper is divided into three sections: First, the New…

This paper chronicles the exploration and development of a residential program of the child welfare authority of Renfrew County in Ontario, Canada. Recognizing that virtually its entire population of youth in care was failing to achieve positive outcomes in education, Renfrew County Family and Children Services embarked on a program development…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe a project to digitise maps at the Royal Tropical Institute, or Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT), of The Netherlands. KIT has an extensive collection of maps and nautical charts of (sub-) tropical regions, including general maps and topographical map series, city maps, thematic maps and…

With the convergence of an ailing economy, a new generation of political leaders, and a strong public sentiment that change is needed on many fronts within the society and across the world, the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship has found new life and is flourishing within society as a whole and within higher education in particular. Yet, there…

TLRP's generic phase (1999-2009) is believed to have been the largest ever UK investment in educational research. This paper describes the critique from which TLRP emerged, its strategic positioning and the roles of successive directors and their teams in its development. The paper offers an early stock take of TLRP's achievements from the…

Years as a school librarian have given the author many wonderful and rewarding collaborative experiences with teachers and students, but it has also made her aware of many barriers to the implementation of information literacy instruction. This is what motivated her to develop a survey measuring school community engagement. This article discusses…

The authors asserted the need for increased postvention efforts for suicide survivors, individuals left behind to grieve the loss of a loved one by suicide, because they have an increased risk for suicide. Indeed, Shneidman (1972) asserted that suicide postvention efforts serve the dual purpose of assisting survivors through the grief process and…

"System accreditation" is a new approach developed for German universities to conduct the mandatory accreditation of all their study programmes. A pilot project at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz is playing an important role in paving the way for this alternative to prevailing programme accreditation. This article describes how…

This paper details a four-stage methodology for developing early alcohol interventions for at-risk Aboriginal youth. Stage 1 was an integrative approach to Aboriginal education that upholds Aboriginal traditional wisdom supporting respectful relationships to the Creator, to the land and to each other. Stage 2 used quantitative methods to…

At Winona State University's Krueger Library, where Kendall Larson is an associate professor and Allison Quam is an assistant professor, informational and directional signs are an essential part of the interior space. Yet the ubiquitous sign and media saturation has challenged them to design and maintain effective signage that is conspicuous and…

Sometimes all it takes is a little fate to accomplish something great, or in this case, something green. The Broward County Public School (BCPS) District shows how a natural disaster (Hurricane Wilma) inspired a green revolution. This article presents the five steps that the Broward County School District followed in implementing an Environmental…

This research investigated Electronic Service Quality (E-SQ) features that contribute to customer satisfaction in an online environment. The aim was to develop an approach which improves E-CRM processes and enhances online customer satisfaction. The research design adopted mixed methods involving qualitative and quantitative methods to…

The purpose of this study was to analyze organizational learning and the facilitating factors and critical elements for development of post-secondary distance education and online degree programs at three universities in Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Hilo (public), Hawaii Pacific University and Chaminade University (both private). The researcher…

Research and professional leadership standards identify specific ways in which principals directly influence school organization and community relationships and exert less direct, but critically important, influence on teaching quality and instructional effectiveness. Principals' roles are central to supporting and supervising teachers'…

This article describes the thinking behind and the implementation of the Design Your Own Park (DYOP) Competition, a collaborative project of a university, a city, and a fund-raising organization to empower neighborhoods and restore outdoor play citywide in Binghamton, New York. The city makes vacant lots and other neglected spaces available for…