We live in powerful times and are experiencing a conceptual emergency. The imperative to learn is evident. Yet in spite of advances in knowledge about how we learn, our application of that knowledge in practice remains patchy at best. A key part of the challenge is to encourage government itself to participate in the learning process, and to…

The challenges our nation faces in educating all of our young people are alarming. Yet in seeking solutions we often find ourselves divided. Public schools are too fundamental to our democratic values to leave isolated from other community institutions. This disconnect does not serve our children well. When addressing public education, we must act…

Identifying the challenges faced by teacher education as the global society becomes increasingly complex requires understanding the current contexts for teacher preparation while projecting what needs to be done to prepare for the future. In order to identify and address the challenges of today and tomorrow, the author contends that teacher…

What is institutional research (IR)? One of the most widely definition of the institutional research is by Joe Saupe, who emphasized institutional research as a set of activities that support institutional planning, policy formation, and decision making. Institutional researchers and IR functions are embedded in the offices of strategic planning,…

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are lifelong neurodevelopmental disabilities. Burden of Disease is an indicator that provides important information on health status and outcomes such as premature mortality and disability. In order to estimate the burden of disease of ASD in the Spanish population during 2003, we followed the procedures used in the…

This report uses the three-component framework to categorize and synthesize major recommendations to Congress for the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) reauthorization and briefly analyzes them from the perspective of the third component. The analysis illuminates fundamental gaps in the prevailing recommendations. In particular, this…

Experiential learning can be an effective way to teach many concepts, and evolution is no exception. We describe the pedagogical techniques, class structure and learning objectives, travel logistics, and impact of three undergraduate honors-level experiential learning seminars that combined teaching topics related to evolution with a field trip to…

The 1999 Academic Senate for California Community Colleges paper, "The Role of Academic Senates in Enrollment Management", presented principles for effective faculty participation in developing policies and making decisions that affect course offerings. In 2007, an Academic Senate resolution called for an update to that paper, to provide…

Participatory decision making seems to be the new development paradigm in international cooperation. It is still a long way, however, to achieve the objectives that are formulated by the international development actors. Non-state actors are only limitedly involved in the policy decision-making. In this paper, we argue that when these actors take…

Schools are increasingly expected to take responsibility for aspects of educational quality assurance. The fact that the Flemish government requires its schools to conduct self-evaluations of their equal opportunities policies is an example of this. This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the quality of these school…

The importance of process in community education is often overlooked. (IRT)

Addresses the question of how policymakers could deliberately influence processes of technology development. Describes the frames of meaning guiding the actions of those involved in the three subprocesses of policymaking, the generation of new technologies, and the management of the firms that bring new artifacts to the market. (Author/CCM)

Since former Surgeon General David Satcher first identified childhood obesity as a threat to the nation's health in 2001, health professionals have investigated potential solutions. Venues in which to address this problem have also been explored. The school setting was identified by the Institute of Medicine as a viable location in which to…

Community colleges across the nation appear to be facing a "perfect storm" during which surging enrollments, tepid state funding, and strong accountability forces are colliding to severely threaten access to and completion of postsecondary education and credentials by lower-skilled and low-income students. In the last few years, record enrollments…

Taken as a whole, the findings of educational research are often inconclusive; far too many competing ideas and thus difficult for policy makers to decide what to believe, unless it says what they really want to hear. An alternative is to seek help from the much more "scientifically reliable" findings of neuroscience. Perhaps this will…