We present a rural Finnish case of nature conservation called the nature values trade (NVT) as an example of the process of changing ecological and cultural states and preferences of environmental policy. We emphasise the importance of local ecological and cultural circumstances for the formulation of environmental policy. The study shows how…

This article reports on Massachusetts' recent decision to offer charterlike freedom to four of its lowest-performing schools. This decision has renewed debate about the role autonomy plays in school improvement: Should it be earned through good performance, or given as a vital tool for improvement? Is it risky to extend it to struggling schools?…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question concerning the benefits of school voucher programs and whether or not they can help to reverse the educational deteriorization that has taken place in the public school system. Several authors and studies were referenced to permit an even exchange of both sides of the issue. The result was a…

This technical report describes the development of fifth grade progress monitoring measures in the area of Passage Reading Fluency. This measure was designed to target the fluency component of a developmental model of reading. Twenty alternate forms were written by graduate students and reviewed by the lead author. The passages were piloted and…

As post-Taliban Afghanistan moves toward the establishment of a viable educational system, key stakeholders and donors are faced with the formidable challenge of how to most rapidly implement teacher training within an environment of diverse, changing, and largely unassessed training needs. The current article explores the dilemmas inherent in…

After briefly presenting INCITE, The Portuguese Association for Information Management's, main research projects on LIS competences development and professional qualifications, this paper discusses the Association's contribution to the redesign of LIS professional competences pathways in the working environment; namely the movement from a pilot…

An important goal of education in developing countries is to implement and improve early childhood education. A pre-post intervention-control design was used to compare a piloted-revised versus a regular preschool program offered by an organization in rural Bangladesh. After 7 months in operation, the quality of the piloted-revised program was…

The purpose of this article is to propose a model to integrate educational mastery principles that emphasize cooperative and learner-centered instruction in higher education with the new advances of instructional technology, and to present a pilot case study to exemplify the model. It is clear that in spite of tremendous efforts by colleges and…

Programs using means tests to identify low-income households face a trade-off between promoting access and ensuring program integrity. The authors use a comparison-district design to estimate the effects of a pilot program to improve the accuracy of the process of certifying students for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to Western Kentucky University (WKU) on June 19-20, 2008 to conduct interviews with individuals who play important roles in the university's teacher preparation program (see Appendix A). These interviews, along with additional documentation provided by WKU and identified by the AED…

This study presents an innovative pedagogical approach where teachers become game designers and engage in creative teaching practices. Within co-design training workshops, 21 Spanish primary and secondary school teachers have developed their own Game-Based Learning (GBL) scenarios, especially tailored to their teaching contexts and students…

This paper describes the use of robotics in an Early Years classroom as a tool to aid the development of technological skills in a creative environment rich with literacy and numeracy opportunities. The pilot project illustrates how a three-phase process can result in the development of: (1) emergent literacy and numeracy, (2) digital access for…

(Purpose) This is a report about the Urban and Rural Healthcare Academy Pilot Program (HAP) that launched at Southern Vermont College (SVC) and Wheelock College (WC) in summer 2010. HAP enabled 18 vulnerable high school students to learn about how to progress to college, how to transition when they arrive on a college campus, and how to prepare…

In December 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave MDRC a grant to conduct reconnaissance on promising strategies to reengage disconnected young people and improve their long-term outcomes. The primary objective of the grant was to identify key leverage points for future investment by government and foundations. MDRC consulted with…