Educational dissemination is a way to foster changes in educational practice. Peer interaction is a special type of dissemination in which people with certain roles and responsibilities help others with the same or similar roles and responsibilities. This involves teachers helping teachers, principals helping principals, business representatives…

Educational researchers can provide unusual perspectives to their research if they include humor and irony. Looking at topics from the reverse (the critical attitude, the aesthetic perspective) allows researchers to see patterns, details, and meanings which are normally hidden from view. This aesthetic perspective enables artists, critics, and…

A study was made of information sources and channels whereby new ideas about improved farming methods are communicated to farmers. Questionnaire interviews were held with 200 farmers in Madhya Pradesh, India. Of the five information sources studied, neighbors were named by all respondents, village level workers by 72%, chairmen of village…

Major findings, interpretations, and policy recommendations developed from a national, in-depth evaluation of the National Diffusion Network (NDN) are presented. Features of the NDN approach to the dissemination of educational innovation include: local change as a goal, use of specialized change agents, emphasis on interpersonal tactics to effect…

This report by New York's Temporary State Commission on Child Welfare discusses a study conducted to determine why the laws pertaining to freeing and placing children for adoption, and the administrative machinery implementing these laws, have failed, and to recommend remedial action. The report is divided into three major sections. Part I, The…

The Trouble-Shooting Checklist (TSC) is an empirically-developed, descriptive instrument which is based on the responses of six educational change agents. It enables an agent to predict a given institution's success in adopting innovations by ordering its levels of concerns and innovation usage. It focuses on two types of innovation:…

The first section of this manual contains a selective review of organizational change literature which focuses on predictive institutional variables as they affect the adoption-diffusion process. The second section describes the development of the Trouble Shooting Checklist (TSC). The third section presents two Trouble Shooting Checklists (TSC-A…

This study is based upon a mailed questionnaire taken from a nationwide sample of adoptive parents, and is part of a larger on-going study of contemporary trends in adoption. A question of interest is that whether those parents who have renounced more traditional conceptions of family life have become more receptive toward "hard-to-place"…

As a final chapter in the research to evaluate the impact of the Michigan township extension experiment, this report focuses on why and how change came about, what factors appear to be most closely related to change, and the ways in which change agents can most effectively help bring about change. In the experiment, extension agents worked…

One of a series of reports on the findings of studies of child health and welfare services and of matters relevant to providing such services is presented. The primary purpose of the series is to promote the utilization of research findings by those who make policy and those who administer programs in the fields of child health and welfare. In the…

The controversies in adoption have extended across a spectrum of policy and practice issues, and although the issues have become clear, resolution has not been achieved nor has consensus developed regarding a framework on which to improve the quality of adoption policy and practice. This book is the second in a series to use an ethics-based…

Although Massachusetts ranks in the top 10 percent among states on several key indicators of child well-being, the state's growing incidence of child maltreatment is stark and confounding. This report launches a state call to action aimed at ending child maltreatment through revising and strengthening systems to protect children, providing support…

Noting that the fastest growing populations in the United States are biracial and multiethnic children, this multimedia exploration of dual-heritage children was developed to inform the early care and education community of the unique identity development of biracial children and their families. The multi-media packet is comprised of an educator's…

Staff members of a state literary resource center surveyed their practitioner clients to determine how they viewed research and the kinds of uses they made of it. Mail surveys were sent to all of the 404 adult education and English as a second language program directors in the state, and followup telephone interviews were conducted with 16 of the…

A study conducted in two undergraduate classes found that the World Wide Web was perceived by students and instructors as a valuable classroom tool but that significant barriers to its adoption existed, including access restrictions, inadequate training, difficulty logging on, poor keyboarding skills, difficulty reading screens, getting lost in…