This paper examines the characteristics and organizational issues associated with university-based research centers. The first section sketches general characteristics and functions of centers. The second section examines major issues concerning the organization of centers, including funding and sustainability, center autonomy, and relations with…

Engineering education, like many fields, has started to explore the benefits of concept maps as an assessment technique for knowledge integration. Because they allow students to graphically link topics and represent complex interconnections among diverse concepts, we argue that concept maps are particularly appropriate for assessing…

Community schools, or full-service schools, address the barriers to learning created by social problems, such as poverty, that affect students' home life and well-being. These schools do this by partnering with community services and agencies to offer students and their families the supports and services they need to remedy the life problems that…

This report brings together information and analysis about taught postgraduate students from data provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and from a search of relevant published information. The authors' contention is that these students are distinctively different from undergraduates and from research postgraduate students.…

The Knight Commission's landmark 1991 report, "Keeping Faith with the Student-Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics," proposed a new "one-plus-three" model for intercollegiate athletics--presidential control directed toward academic integrity, fiscal integrity, and an independent certification process to verify that integrity. Indeed,…

The Delaware Enhanced Assessment Grant (DE EAG) project was funded by the U.S. Department of Education in 2006 as an initiative to assist 10 state departments of education (SDE) teams, and local school district and high school teams, in implementing a comprehensive and balanced learning and assessment system (CBAS) with a strong emphasis on a…

Technological innovation is driving fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true of digital content, as our use of e-books, downloadable music, streaming television and movies, and online social networks has exploded. However, the explosive growth in our use of digital content seems so far to have eluded many of the 50…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Lessons from the first generation of standards-based reforms suggest that intense…

Purpose: This paper aims to: extend the concept of "The learning organization" to "The learning community," especially disadvantaged communities; demonstrate how leaders in a migrant community can achieve positive change at the personal, professional, team and community learning levels through participatory action learning and…

This is the first in a forthcoming series of reports documenting state administration of educational technology funding included in the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (ARRA). The ARRA included a $650 million allocation in ESEA Title II, Part D, commonly referred to as the "Enhancing Education through Technology…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…

The purpose of this mixed methods follow-up single case study was two-fold: to determine if a school district was able to sustain a professional learning community (PLC) and to identify factors that enhanced, inhibited, or promoted the sustainability of a PLC from a district-wide perspective, with particular focus on how a change in leadership,…

Total quality management based governance models tend to focus on incremental improvements within the boundaries of a single organization. This may limit the benefits of information technology because they are not complex enough to address business or performance problems that extend beyond the boundaries of a single organization. The research…

The Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership is a collaboration that aims to improve student outcomes, accelerate achievement for all students, and close achievement gaps by capitalizing on shared systemic capacity-building across two high-need districts. The Partnership is a joint effort of the third- and fourth-largest districts in California to…

Supporting Teachers as Action Researchers (STAR) explores how school improvement initiatives may be sustained over time. It represents stage one of a broader investigation into how teachers' professional learning may be enhanced by positioning teachers as practitioner researchers and professionals who are capable of generating change from within…