The Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988 provides opportunities for educators to form linkages with other agencies to strengthen families and help them move toward self-sufficiency. The FSA affords professionals chances to forge critical interagency connections and expand the range and capacity of programs for learners at risk. A strategy for forming…

This guide is intended to assist groups of special educators to plan, design, and implement mutual professional support activities. The first section, on the nature of professional support groups, presents a definition and discussion of activity focus, format, permanence of focus, and structure. The second section looks specifically at the role of…

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) was established to work with states and other policy groups to develop a model of educational outcomes for students with disabilities and to generate a list of indicators of these outcomes. NCEO developed a technique named Multi-Attribute Consensus Building (MACB) to build consensus among…

The Outdoor Program is part of the special education program in a Northwest U.S. junior high school that combines wilderness activities with traditional classroom activities for students with behavior disorders. The goals of the program are to help the students learn to trust each other and the teachers, to teach students how to cooperate, and to…

This paper, by a parent of a child with severe mental and physical disabilities, discusses why parent/professional teaming is important to maximize benefits for children and youth with severe disabilities. It recounts the family's experience with the impact of disability. Strategies for effective parent/professional teaming are outlined, stressing…

The report presents the proceedings of a 1986 World Health Organization meeting on multiprofessional training programmes (emphasizing an interdisciplinary team approach) for health personnel in Europe. Presented first is an overview of the topic which covers: (1) purposes and definition of multiprofessional education; (2) current trends and…

This paper describes an attempt to introduce 33 education majors to the concept of cooperative learning as a teaching method they may use when they are classroom teachers. The benefits of cooperative learning for young students are briefly discussed, and an explanation is given of the "Student Teams Achievement Divisions" (STAD) system of grade…

This paper describes the strategies, issues, activities, and interactions associated with establishing six professional development schools (PDS) as part of the Benedum Project in West Virginia. Establishment of the PDSs was a collaborative project, a school-university partnership between West Virginia University and local school districts. The…

Implementation processes and outcomes at a junior high school of the Mastery in Learning Project, an NEA-sponsored national school transformation effort, are described in this paper. Based on the principle that a school's decisions should be made by its faculty, the project seeks to develop teachers' ability to creatively and cooperatively use…

The concept of treatment/therapy with children exhibiting antisocial maladaptive behavior is analyzed. The process of assessing the individual and planning treatment in a multidisciplinary team setting is discussed. Suggestions are made for treating maladaptive behaviors or teaching adaptive behaviors, and guidelines (such as defining targeted…

"Lack of discipline" heads the list of major school problems in annual polls on public education. Studies show a major factor distinguishing effective schools is an "orderly climate." The school board must have a firm discipline policy that reflects its goals and relates discipline to the total learning process. In establishing policies the school…

This training module includes a trainer's manual and a participant's manual designed for school psychologists and concerned with the appraisal process for students with suspected handicapping conditions. The instructor's guide presents a script for covering seven major steps in the appraisal process (sample subtopics in parentheses): (1) pre…

Discusses historical background of the primary health care team and key questions about team delivery, reviews past experiences in interdisciplinary education for primary care, lists guidelines for future educational experiences, and presents a model for the realistic implementation of these concepts in any health science center. (Author/JT)

The reports included in this annotated bibliography of 11 publications on school improvement teams suggest that ownership and commitment to improvement are natural consequences of shared planning and decisionmaking, that overcentralization has severely limited the scope of teachers' professional discretion, and that quality circles--stressing…

Because schools must still respond to federal reporting requirements while exercising greater responsibility for funding and administering local programs that were once under state and federal administration, and because of the increased public outcry for local accountability, many school districts have maintained large central administrative…