This training program is intended to help administrators and staff developers prepare teachers of special needs students to work more effectively with paraprofessionals--to direct and monitor their activities, to assess their contributions to the instructional process, and to use systematic procedures to improve their skills and productivity.…

Ways that academic advising can be used to foster cohesion in the college are addressed. Advising is assumed to contribute to the primary mission of the institution, the pursuit of scholarship. The question at issue concerns the types of efforts directed toward differentiation and specialization in contrast to efforts designed to increase…

This step-by-step guide is intended to help educators learn about the characteristics and activities of high-performing managers. It synthesizes the ideas of several experts on business management performance and includes examples of highly successful educational managers. It also briefly presents a comprehensive strategy that educational managers…

The report describes the University of Florida Multidisciplinary Diagnostic and Training Program (MDTP), jointly administered through the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Special Education. It functions as a diagnostic, training, and consultative resource to local school districts in north central Florida and provides short-term…

Patient care in a hospital setting is directly related to the professional information and knowledge exchange between physicians and nurses concerning patients in their own care. This exchange, while informal, is considered a teaching-learning transaction. In recent years, as gender ratios in medicine have changed, a new transaction has arisen…

For the remainder of the century, large numbers of students will transfer from two-year to four-year colleges. In light of this, two- and four-year mathematics faculty need to sharpen their understanding of each other and to plan improved interaction. The problem in communication between two- and four-year mathematics faculty comes from living in…

Some meanings of the term "loose coupling" are offered, and ties between it and other concepts used to describe organizations are suggested. One research program designed to measure the degree of coupling in schools through survey methods is described, and the methodological and substantive results of that work are summarized. The paper…

Faculty development through peer observation, faculty revitalization through curricular change, and interdisciplinary work are addressed in this newsletter issue. The peer observation process is primarily directed toward fine-tuning or adjusting existing competencies, and usually focuses on factors such as questioning, clarity, organization,…

A formative evaluation of a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, predoctoral project was conducted. The program, which was funded by the federal Minorities and Women's Program, was designed to increase the participation of minorities and women in educational research and development. The project, "Experimental Program for Opportunities in…

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest outlines of a preventive law practice, raise issues, and provoke further thought and discussion concerning the application of preventive law principles and techniques to the management and operation of educational systems. The theory of preventive law and some of its premises are examined in order to…

This training module describes and defines the role of the behavioral consultant and strategies for time management, problem solving, providing teacher support, and establishing collaborative relationships within the school, between home and school, and between school and community. The first of three workshops addresses the role of the behavioral…

For the past three years, case studies have been conducted of a school district's implementation of the California Mentor Teacher Program. For two of the case studies, interview data of mentors and their mentees were distilled into vignettes about how mentors and teachers worked together. At the end of this project, researchers used several…

The origin of the Science-Humanities Program (NEXA) at San Francisco State University, California, is described. The overall goal of NEXA was to provide a model for reconciliation between the two cultures, science and humanities (philosophy, literature, history, and the arts). The first objective was to establish a sense of collegiality and common…

Exchanges within the mentor-protege relationship, the effect of age and gender on that relationship, and the effect of that relationship on career progress and subsequent mentoring behavior are here studied for the first time in the context of a state government agency. Twenty-five males and 25 females were selected randomly from among 250…

The thesis of this paper is that by recognizing the separate abilities and insights of educational administrators and researchers, cooperative research can be conducted that benefits both parties, yet requires neither a new research methodology nor increased research sophistication of administrators. The authors address this thesis from the…