Reform is another word for that which has challenged community college leaders for too long: the need to reorganize, to transform, and to change. Challenges such as declining funds and increasing accountability are unquestionable certainties for community college leaders who must face daily the realities about them. For them it is not a story…

School improvement and reform efforts frequently involve the adoption of a new curriculum program. This article examines the factors that influence program selection when schools have freedom to choose as opposed to having programs mandated by district, state, or national education authorities. Survey and document analysis are used to examine the…

Teachers of first-year medical students identified possible reasons for poor performance. This exposed several beliefs about students. These beliefs were tested by comparing student attitudes with their exam performance. The findings question most of the teachers' beliefs. There does appear to be a link between exam performance and two factors:…

Today there are over 1,500 public-use airports in the United States. Each of these airports provides a service to the surrounding community, whether in the form of a general aviation or commercial air service facility. An airport is dependent on many facets of the local government infrastructure for support services. Also, the airports have ties…

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how principal subjectivities are constructed by particular normalizing processes that occur through the disciplinary power of grants and submission writing. An increasing part of the principal's job, under moves towards self-governing schools, is a reliance of grants and submissions in order to obtain…

One of the more controversial reform efforts, concerning efficient school systems, is teacher compensation linked with student outcomes. However, absent from the public discourse and empirical research literature concerning systemic reform is the probative value of pay structures which connect the compensation of school executives and student…

Challenges associated with the increasing use of contingent faculty appointments in American higher education are mounting. The AAUP and other professional groups have identified several major problems: (1) unacceptable conditions and compensation for contingent faculty members; (2) poor learning outcomes for students; and (3) the potential…

The high demand for educational services for training in specialties of economic management, a level that has become increasingly apparent in the past decade and a half, has taken shape as a result of the population's perceptions as to which specialties are the most in demand in Russia's labor market. And yet, as experts in the field of education…

Current research is demonstrating the effectiveness of comprehensive reading instruction for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID; Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Champlin, 2010; Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Jones, & Champlin, 2010; Browder, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Courtade, Gibbs, & Flowers, 2008). One overarching finding from these…

It's now nearly ten years since the author started participating in and presenting at national conferences related to strategic enrollment management (SEM). Having entered this profession with nearly 20 years of experience in transitional initiatives related to the first-year experience and academic advisement services, she has perceived an…

From 1998 to 2008, the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) offered its employees a variety of options for formation, a type of reflective practice. The district encompasses 10 locations, seven of them independently accredited colleges. Formation is based primarily on Parker Palmer's model for Circles of Trust as described in "A…

This paper describes the prevailing academic scenarios of a representative group of secondary schools in Assam (India) with special references to students performance in general and mathematics performance in particular. The state of Assam is one of the economically backward regions of India and is witnessing socio-political disturbances mainly…

The current research sought to extend the 2 x 2 achievement goal framework by developing and testing the Achievement Goals for Research Scale (AGRS). Participants (N = 317) consisted of graduate students in the life, physical, and behavioral sciences. A principal components analysis (PCA) extracted five components accounting for 72.59% of the…

This article makes an explicit comparison between the reconfiguration of tertiary language education in Europe, the USA and Canada. It argues that, despite certain minor differences between continents, the same trends are operative across the Atlantic. It then examines each of them, illustrating how similar forces are at work in shaping higher…

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has during recent decades influenced professionals and policy-makers in Norway as well as in other countries, resulting in changes in documents regulating early childhood institutions. Little is known, however, about the way this right is understood and realized in everyday practice. How is the concept…