To tackle low achievement and a 22% freshmen student withdrawal rate, a Seattle, Washington, high school gradually restructured its vision, policies, and curriculum. A committee fashioned the Bridge project, providing all freshmen with access to opportunities promoting academic achievement, responsibility, school spirit, fellowship, acceptance,…

Describes a three-step process of description, interpretation, and evaluation intended to empower students in visual communication classes to examine and critique their work in a self-directed way. Offers a framework for directing the discussion of student work through directed questioning. (SR)

Presents a theoretical framework for conceptualizing how supervisors may use their interactional power to assist women-in-training to assume power. Claims that empowering women requires attending to women's need for connection in interactions. Describes an interactional model for encouraging connected power in supervision. (RJM)

Evaluated classrooms within four Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) schools, operationalizing the ASP principles, values, and concepts of a "powerful learning environment" (PLE), examining how similarly PLE was implemented in different classrooms and schools, and analyzing the relation between degree of implementation and differences in…

Presents three Hispanic students' experiences with the writing center. Suggests that the writing center centers students by helping them find a voice in the academy and by empowering them in ways that traditional institutional authority does not. Lists four ways in which the writing center can help Hispanic students. (SG)

Presents the idea that learning through active resistance makes the information that students discover more valuable to them. Provides examples from classroom experiences. (EV)

Unlike stimulus-response models based on external controls, the Educational Responsibility program thriving in many New York State schools is designed to strengthen student empowerment and responsibility. Teachers learn to create needs-fulfilling classrooms, using strategies such as building team involvement, offering choices, increasing value for…

The 1967 "Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students" articulated a set of principles that seemed revolutionary to educators who expected higher education to continue its previous course in which students were merely passive recipients of education. This article provides a chronology of the development of the Joint Statement. (KW)

Proposes that general education curricula often have difficulty remaining faithful to goals of student empowerment. Provides case study of first year composition (FYC). Suggests that a strong commitment to reflection and revision of programs will create curricula that are more questioning and less comfortable with their own assumptions. Proposes…

Discusses what empowerment means to students at three academically elite and socially privileged colleges (Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Scripps College) who already feel at home both in the "academy" and in the privileged world. Argues that writing teachers in such academies should help students understand their…

Students (n=327) participating in an undergraduate community service learning course were surveyed at the beginning and end of a semester concerning their sense of power to impact the world. Contrary to expectation, they reported a lesser sense of power following the experience, with the effect strongest for particular students and settings,…

Illustrates the possibilities of critical literacy by discussing a project a class of fourth-grade students undertook to write and produce a play about the conditions of apartheid, the history of resistance, and the upcoming South African elections. Concludes that students felt empowered as social activists and believed they had a mandate and the…

Using technology can empower students, but most U.S. schools fall short of this goal. The power of technology as related to other school subjects and problem solving is well documented in projects promoting integration of technology education with mathematics and science. National Science Education Standards are summarized. (26 references) (MLH)

Describes how the author used "democratic" directing methods in her after-school play rehearsals of Shakespeare to help high school students navigate the shifting space between their own creative freedom and the conventional confines of a public high school. Details her use of unorthodox rehearsal strategies involving student…

Offers and explains three pieces of advice for using the Internet in language arts classes: become a student (have students train teachers to use the Internet and have student interns in computer rooms to assist teachers); "morph into a cybrarian" (create an on-line library of World Wide Web links related to class projects); and empower students.…