Background: This article concerns learning with high school students and the effect of snorkeling and coral reef monitoring at the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The effectiveness of classroom learning, student-reef relationships and reef trips were investigated. Purpose: This paper presents selected student accounts of reef educational…

This paper summarizes a report entitled "Effective Programs for Students At Risk: A Sourcebook" by the Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools (CREMS) at Johns Hopkins University. Based on a survey of research on services to at-risk students, the CREMS report identified programs that improved the academic performance of…

This report describes first year activities and results of a project comparing two early interventions with 102 children (grades 1 and 2) at risk for emotional or behavior disorders. Fifty-nine children received an intervention involving social skills lessons given on a whole-class basis at least twice a week with information sent home regularly…

The Education Council Act of 1991 Established the National Education Commission on Time and Learning as an independent advisory body and called for a comprehensive review of the relationship between time and learning in American schools. The commission's report, released in May 1994, found that school reform is destined to founder unless programs…

Time constraints often diminish college administrators capacity to address problems and concerns. The lack of time to accomplish administrative responsibilities can both produce and magnify stress. Perceptions of amounts of time spent on problems associated with 21 administrative activities were obtained from 373 public community, public…

Many students are not actively engaged in learning in mathematics classrooms. The purpose of this study was to develop understandings about student engagement with the mathematics curriculum and its influence on student engagement. The research was conducted in two seventh-grade classes taught by the same teacher, who used direct instruction. The…

This paper presents the results of a school improvement study (main field test) directed at schools with mixed-age classes in the context of inservice teacher education. A quasi-experimental treatment control group investigation was designed to test the effects of the staff development program "Dealing with Mixed-age Classes," and the…

A study evaluated an adaption of the Stallings Process of Teaching Reading in Secondary Schools in a large urban public school system. This inservice training program is designed to increase teachers' effective use of time. The program is composed of pre-training observations and resulting feedback on needed improvements in classroom behavior,…

This observer training manual was developed as a central component of a research effort, Changing Teacher Practice (CTP), which was designed to increase the frequency of effective teaching behaviors and staff development strategies in an ongoing school system. The observations focused on two major aspects of classroom teaching--instruction and…

The financial health of the education system of most states is not good; those seeking to improve educational quality will have to find inexpensive methods. Areas of the American educational system in which quality standards are not being met include time spent in learning, curriculum content, appropriate use of new technology, and personnel.…

The technique of path analysis was used to test the role of student task engagement as a mediating process variable linking teacher behavior and student achievement in mathematics and social studies classes. Study participants included 40 teacher interns and their respective second-, third-, and fifth-grade classes from a school district served by…

In a survey of 1,500 administrators, most of the 400 respondents agreed by an 8 to 1 margin that reforms to raise academic standards in public schools are necessary. In high schools, a decline in reading, vocabulary, and math skills is due basically to a decreased academic emphasis. Solutions include more required courses, more opportunities for…

The Learning Partners Program (LPP) of the Westview Schools in North York (Ontario) was evaluated. The language arts program paired primary school students from grades 1 to 3 with junior school students three years older. The junior school students received preparation from their homeroom teachers. The evaluation examined the degree of program…

This paper describes the results of a study of the microcomputer use patterns reflected by more than 13,000 users' records from the microcomputer laboratory at Western Kentucky University for 1983 to 1986. The data analyzed focused on: (1) numbers of users; (2) frequent user groups; (3) sex differences; (4) prime time usage; (5) the use of…

The Memphis Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT), one of seven ACOT locations, was a joint project of the city schools and Apple Computer. The ACOT consisted of a class of 30 fifth grade students in an inner city school, who were selected on the basis of the willingness of the students and their parents to participate and to use computers in the…