Although admission criteria such as GRE scores and undergraduate GPAs (UGPAs) have been shown to moderately predict success in graduate school for students in other academic disciplines and in MSW programs, no published research has examined factors associated with success in social work PhD programs. This article reports the findings of a pilot…

Service-learning has been shown to be an effective technique for teaching diversity; however, the literature is scant concerning theoretically informed approaches. This study fills that void by drawing upon the work of Freire, Rendón, and others. After describing how an integrative praxis approach is applied in a sociology course, the authors…

Changes to general education curricula are taking place across the globe. From the Bologna Process in Europe to the Liberal Education and America's Promise initiative in the United States, colleges and universities are reforming what constitutes general education for their students. At the University of Dayton, such reforms took the shape of a…

The idea that secondary English language learner (ELL) students can master rigorous academic content quickly and deeply goes against much accepted wisdom in the field, but Aída Walqui--the author and Director of WestEd's Teacher Professional Development Program, which houses the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative--and her…

As the standards and accountability movements have gained momentum and political favor in recent years, a renewed interest in instructional practices intended to promote greater success on standardized tests has been evidenced. One such instructional practice, homework, while certainly not a recent practice, receives both support and criticism and…

This field note presents the results of a pilot study that explored the use of a new non-numerically rated field performance tool, a vignette matching measure for MSW students. Evaluation of performance in the field has proved to be a difficult task because few if any measures, including competency-based measures, have known levels of reliability…

Commonly spearheaded by librarians, Kindle pilot programs are springing up in schools around the country, bringing ereaders to K-12 students, who are cracking the spine, so to speak, on these alternative learning tools. From full adoption of the devices at Clearwater High School in Florida to tentative beta projects, educators are exploring how…

There is a timely movement afoot to secure the rightful place of social studies as a core part of curriculum at a time when it is increasingly compromised across the nation. The authors present a model that accepts the call to consider the enterprise of social studies research and broaden it to address the needs of the day. They offer a brief…

Within academic library collections, electronic journals are a mainstay. Ebooks, on the other hand, have established themselves as a viable alternative to the print book more slowly. The growing acceptance and prevalence of ebooks cannot be ignored. As libraries continue to build their collections, ebooks play an increasingly larger role in…

Preschool-aged children continually learn new skills and perfect existing ones. "Mastery motivation" is theorized to be a personality trait linked to skill learning. The Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ) quantifies mastery motivation. This pilot study evaluated DMQ test-retest score reliability (preschool-version) and included…

To raise the bar for teacher preparation and evaluation, assessments should be based on how well teachers perform in the classroom, not how they are rated during principal-led classroom observations or on written licensure tests, a new report argues. "Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness," by education policy expert and Stanford professor Linda…

Context: Educational training programs both impart knowledge and allow students to practice skills to gain clinical competence. Objective: Understand the educational training provided to athletic training students regarding sudden death in sport beyond exertional heat stroke. Design: An exploratory, qualitative study using telephone interviews and…

The use of digital badges for peer-credentialing web-shared work offers the promise of extending classroom learning beyond explicit course objectives and evaluations. This pilot study of peer-awarded badges examines the results of an online graduate course where students voted on and evaluated the web-shared work of their colleagues on different…

This field study describes changes in caregiving and young children's physical and behavioral/cognitive development as a consequence of a pilot intervention using typical staff in 2 Central American orphanages for children with severe and multiple disabilities. The intervention trained staff in sensitive, responsive, child-directed,…

Sustainable agriculture is an area that is gaining momentum. Extension agents are expected to teach production methods that include sustainable agriculture, yet little is known regarding how Extension agents feel about this agricultural paradigm. The research reported here sought to further develop an instrument that could quantitatively measure…