The standard model of technology diffusion argues that changing teachers' perceptions and epistemological beliefs about the value of an innovation is conducive to successful implementation. It is believed that teachers' receptiveness to technology and a re-conceptualization of its role in teaching and learning can drive the development of new…

There is an abundance of evidence showing relatively strong associations between family characteristics and a child's psychological functioning--both within the normal range and, also, with reference to psychopathology. That has sometimes led to the assumption that equally strong associations should be found within adoptive families. Nevertheless,…

Purpose: In the 1980s and 1990s enthusiasm for Japanese or "lean" manufacturing methods swept through Western industry. At the time, commentators argued that these methods represented a new paradigm of manufacturing, a radical break with traditional methods. The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of conversion from one…

Adoption and family communication both affect adolescent adjustment. We proposed that adoption status and family communication interact such that adopted adolescents in families with certain communication patterns are at greater risk for adjustment problems. We tested this hypothesis using a community-based sample of 384 adoptive and 208…

Research on children who have been internationally adopted provides many strong examples of resilience. This paper discusses what counts as resilience in intercountry adoption and includes new data from the first study in this area conducted in Ireland. As with studies conducted in other jurisdictions, the Irish data indicate a remarkable capacity…

Good jobs in the nation's twenty-first-century economy require advanced literacy skills such as categorizing, evaluating, and drawing conclusions from written texts. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards by nearly all the states, combined with tough literacy assessments that are now in the offing, will soon reveal that literacy skills of…

The aim of this study is for the teachers in higher education to provide relative information about the use of the web 2.0 resources within its context and within the framework of the university staff training program. In this context, we have developed a tool in order to study 400 teachers attitude, use and perceived usefulness of web 2.0…

The higher education system in Taiwan has increasingly adopted business simulation games (BSGs) in recent years. Previous BSG benefit research has shifted focus from learning performance to motivation due to mixed results. One recent study empirically investigated student perceptions on the continued use of BSGs; however, the counterpart of higher…

A qualitative study was conducted in Butterworth, in the rural Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, to explore sources of distress for young people. Semi-structured, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 men and 24 women aged 16-22 years. The findings revealed interconnections between structural factors such as death, poverty,…

The New Social Studies movement was an effort by social scientists to reform US social studies/history curriculum at all levels during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the end, more than 50 different projects attempting to revitalise social studies were developed. Many of the projects focused on inquiry-based teaching practices and curriculum.…

In 2005, the Harvard Business School began to promote the Harvard case method (HCM) within the Asian region. Because of differences in classroom culture between Asian and Western countries, Asian participants' reaction to the HCM implementation is of interest. This study explores how the western initiated method was implemented in one of the Asian…

Colleges and universities have spent significant financial and human resources deploying and promoting educational technologies, including Learning Management Systems (LMS). A large body of research now exists on the impact of technology on student learning, including the roles of blended learning, hybrid classes, and distance learning. Yet,…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program aims to improve student achievement by promoting the implementation of four school intervention models: transformation, turnaround, restart, and closure. Previous research provides evidence that low-performing schools adopt some practices promoted by the four models, but little is known about how…

Portland Public Schools (PPS), the largest school district in Oregon, serves more than 46,000 students in regular and special programs. More than 2,900 classroom teachers address the needs of a diverse student population (44% minority, 46% low income, 14% special education, 9% English language learners). A district needs assessment in fall 2005…

This report examines factors associated with integration of online learning in Sydney region high schools. Past studies have shown that schools can be identified as operating at a certain level of use--ranging from non-use, through stages such as entry, and adaptation, arriving at transformation--when a focus on technology shifts to a focus on the…