In spite of an increased effort to boost Latino parental participation in their children's education, barriers exist which inhibit them from forming partnerships with the schools. This paper describes the Mid-Atlantic Center, which provides technical assistance in areas of race, national origin, and gender to 6 states and 732 school districts in…

Offers experience-based insights on building relationships of trust and respect with hard-to-reach youth. Describes a program, designed for 12- to 14-year olds on juvenile probation, which emphasizes love and respect. Argues for the futility of fixating on problem behaviors and the importance of providing youth a challenging and fun environment.…

Describes a community service-learning seminar for college freshmen, focusing on education for empowerment. Notes an inherent dichotomy: students need to learn specific, empowering ways to interact with community members even while confronting uncomfortable issues but remain empowered themselves by how the service-learning course is designed and…

Calls for greater attention to pedagogical challenges and opportunities to integrate service-learning and academic study, particularly in maintaining both content coverage and empowerment as objectives. Draws on transcripts of class discussions and student writing in a community service learning course focusing on literacy to trace students'…

Describes effective aspects of a 4-day inservice teacher education program offered in the context of Britain's Brunel Able Children's Education center. Discusses the nature of higher ability in children, identification of ability, classroom strategies, and the role of questioning. Describes a learning project based on word explorations to…

To aid teacher training, the Record of Student Learning Experience (ROSE) gives formal recognition to experiences students bring to courses, identifies individual learning needs, encourages self-direction, empowers students, identifies development needs for induction to schools, and highlights the complexity of teaching. Describes first and second…

Explored how middle level integrativist teachers working in a conventional school district sustain their commitment to integrativist learning. Used ethnographic interviewing, which uncovered four themes in these teachers' perspectives: (1) the very different nature of relationships among teachers and with students; (2) struggles with instructional…

Tested the psychometric properties of an instrument used to assess adolescents' empowerment concerning alcohol. Empowerment was significantly and inversely associated with alcohol use after controlling for peer influence and self-efficacy. Suggests that psychological empowerment is theoretically meaningful and is significantly associated with…

Describes how a female student who was harassed by a male peer broke free of the victim role. Includes background information of this "Manipulation of Body Boundaries" crisis. Interview with the 12-year-old girl reflects the six stages of "Life Space Crisis Intervention," through which she learned strategies to resist…

Explores topics related to how families, schools, and communities can use communication to strengthen their partnerships. Discusses how communication empowers participants in a shared-learning process, and explores how attitudes shape communication efforts. Examines the role of culture in the communication process, focusing on how cultural…

Asserts that transformational leadership principles can help student affairs staff to actualize their own leadership potential and to model appropriate leadership characteristics for student government leaders. Discusses implications for practice. (KW)

Presents results from a study investigating the effects of professional training on teachers' use of observations to assess elementary students. Describes the training program and its focus on professional empowerment, strategy development for observation-based assessment, and learning the value of peer support. Reports that participants'…

Describes why and what happened when a teacher changed from viewing English teaching as a value-neutral act to teaching what matters to her. Relates what she expects from the reading and writing workshop and how raising her own voice in terms of her passions and what she values has strengthened students' voices. (SR)

Critiques recent efforts to improve the capacity of human service institutions to meet the needs of urban youth, and identifies the dissonance between the risk factors associated with these youth's cultural identities and the norms of the social institutions serving them. Discusses ways of overcoming this dissonance. (GR)

Tests cognitive assessment of 180 students enrolled in a cornerstone course in communication theory. Finds that a profile of factors that influence cognitive assessment scores can be developed. Demonstrates how assessment may be used to empower both faculty and students by offering pedagogical and administrative strategies that enhance student…