Research literature dealing with the adoption and diffusion of educational innovations is summarized, and factors important in the adoption-implementation process are identified. A framework for assessing factors that may affect implementation and long-term use of health education curriculum innovations is given. (PP)

A model for school policy makers is provided to help clarify the process of applying research findings to schools and classroooms. The 10-step model is meant to facilitate the systematic review of research and the planning and implementation of new programs and to illustrate potential university and school district cooperation. (Author/PP)

Discusses seven general guidelines for deciding whether to adopt a new program: get the facts, hire a consultant, investigate the philosophy and theory, analyze costs, decide if the program has staying power, visit a similar program, and involve teachers. (Author/JM)

This vignette from the author's book, "The Reform of the Asylum: Between Conscience and Convenience in Progressive America," provides historical evidence of resistance to community placement of the mentally disabled. Resistance is due to the social convenience of custodial care and the self-interest of institutions and their employees.…

Administrators in Red Bank, New Jersey, are confident that mastery learning is the key to their students' higher achievement. (Author)

The present approach to providing state assistance to school districts focuses exclusively on conceptual issues and ignores certain critical aspects of physical implementation. The model proposed emphasizes the use of microcomputers in the physical support system and describes an inservice program to train people to use the machines. (Author/IRT)

Highlights a failure on the part of social services to respond to the current needs of the child welfare system. Strongly advocates a commitment to concurrent planning, defined here as the process of working toward family reunification while at the same time establishing an alternative plan, usually in the form of permanency with a relative or…

Recounts the author's experience of visiting her native Korea for the first time, where, as an adopted child brought up in Belgium, she learns what it can feel like to be caught between two worlds. Emphasizes the right of every child to know her or his origin and to be rightful owner of a birth certificate. (AA)

Examined family racial socialization and ecological competence during childhood and adolescence in a sample of 88 African-American transracial adoptees and their families. Longitudinal path analyses indicated that Eurocentric reference group orientation (RGO) increased over time while Africentric RGO declined for the adoptees, and maladjustment…

At the two-year mark, foster-care outcomes (continued court supervision, kinship placements, adoption) were examined for 1,038 African American, Latino, and White infants, prenatally exposed to drugs and removed from their mothers at birth, and 203 infants similarly removed but not drug-exposed. Discusses policy and practice implications in terms…

Discusses the social construction of adoptive parenting and adopted children as reflected in clinical and adoption triangle research. Although clinicians view adoptive families as second best to biologically related families, a random sample of 150 respondents did not differentiate between the functioning of adoptive and biologically related…

A pilot study examined effects of pre- and peri-adoption therapy on adoptive placements of 13 children who had been in foster care and who had been identified as "emotionally unstable." Intervention included counseling with licensed therapists and other services, such as parent education to ease the transition into permanency. Findings…

When a teacher-trainer conducted a workshop on the "6+1" model of writing evaluation for teachers at a school for the deaf, she used her experience teaching deaf children to adapt the model for their use. Since she knew that deaf students are actually English language learners, she drew on and modified a version of the model used with native…

Examines how social workers may reduce ethical conflicts associated with efforts to address substance abuse by adopting a harm reduction approach to policy, practice, and research. Also examines current drug policies and their consequences and, in particular, how these policies affect social workers as practitioners, agents of social control, and…

Examined the behavior of 203 secondary school business education teachers with reference to selected social system factors, relative to their adoption of microcomputers for delivering instruction. Findings suggest that the individual's attitude, the characteristics of the innovation, and the critical threshold mark influence microcomputer adoption…