Everyone agrees that schools should ensure a positive school climate. Less agreement exists, however, about what this means and how to accomplish it. This is especially so when the call is for developing a safe and supportive environment that also is nurturing and caring and that provides all students with an equal opportunity to succeed. Equity…

Attracting and retaining effective education leaders and teaching staff for regional, rural and remote schools in Australia is a major sustainability and quality issue facing every State and Territory. It is also a major concern in pre-service teacher education, particularly for those universities which have a commitment to rural and regional…

The invitation to provide a review of the articles published in our five year editorship prompts us to evaluate the aims and purposes of music education research, and to consider the function of journals such as "BJME" in bridging the artificial divide between academics and professionals. We identify four themes that were prominent in…

Prevention coordinators have an important role on campus. To be effective, they must demonstrate the right balance of accurate information, clear strategy, and open collaboration with others. A strong prevention program requires understanding the problem, identifying the contributing factors, taking action to intervene, and then evaluating to see…

The mooted development of a set of core British values demands a thorough re-examination of what it means to be British. The author argues that British people need to look at Britishness a bit more as others see them. For many the experience of Britishness was brutishness and it is still seen that way in the Middle East and not just by those in…

The context for this study involves the intersection between a community's increasing expectation for hiring highly qualified classroom teachers and its increasing expectation for access and involvement in public schools. The current investigation attempted to identify community members' perceptions of the primary factors that influence their…

This article examines how the political structure of school elections contributes to leadership perspectives related to school-community engagement. Interview data from school superintendents, school board presidents, and city mayors across four cities and two election types were analyzed to determine if differences in school election structure…

When asked to explain why so many urban schools show unsatisfactory results on academic or social measures, principals routinely and quickly turn to descriptions of parents. In other words, when seeking to explain why work within a school is so difficult or why reform initiatives have been unsuccessful, many principals point outside the school.…

Conventional school improvement models traditionally involve "walled-in" approaches. These models focus primarily on academic learning strategies in response to standards-based accountabilities. Although positive outcomes have been documented, expanded school improvement models such as the Ohio Community Collaboration Model for School…

In 1897, long before the entertainment industry made Nashville famous with country music and the Grand Ole Opry, the city was known as the "Athens of the South," with numerous institutions of higher learning. A century later, four of Nashville's oldest universities have united to promote science education in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools…

This article examines the culture of community-based after-school programs that serve low-income Hmong immigrant youth. By drawing on knowledge of Hmong culture, history, and family structure, and knowledge of mainstream American culture, the staff at the community centers are able to connect to children and adolescents in ways that schools do…

As commonplace as teams are in today's organizations, so too are the frustrations reported by members of many teams. Some of this frustration may be attributed to the lack of organizational support for team efforts. In this article, we draw on Kolb's components of clear direction and accountability, appropriate staffing and training, adequate…

The lack of national attention to preparing future faculty for their roles as citizen-scholars represents a significant missed opportunity. Whereas graduate student involvement in engaged teaching and research, such as service-learning or community-based research, likely has immediate benefits for retention and learning, this article focuses on…

This booklet explains how service learning can be used to encourage out-of-school youth to return to an education program. The booklet begins with a discussion of the term "out-of-school youth" that includes the early warning signals indicating a potential for dropping out of school and circumstances and characteristics of potential…

On August 4, 2008, four leading associations serving research universities, the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, convened a roundtable discussion engaging provosts, chief research…