This report describes major activities and accomplishments of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Research & Training Center on Enhancing Employability of Individuals with Disabilities from May 15, 1996 through May 14, 1997. The Center has a 5-year contract in the priority area of enhancing employability of individuals with severe disabilities. The…

The book consists of 46 chapters by numerous authors, divided into six parts. Part 1, "The Moving Target: Instructional Development from a Philosophical Vantage Point," addresses the questions: To what extent is instructional design in fact a valid and thriving area? and To what extent and in what quarters is it considered to be a dying or…

Allowing students to both learn about portfolios and experience them firsthand, this book describes teacher education courses where undergraduate and graduate students are evaluated using portfolio assessment techniques--the same methods they will one day use in their own classrooms. The book also explores how portfolio assessment can enable…

The purpose of PACE is to bring together individuals who have been responsible for new, innovative, and exciting developmental physical education programs. The following summaries are included: "Literacy in the Gym" (Tami Benham); "Activity Ideas for Fundamental Movement Skill Development" (Thomas H. Green); "Creative…

Suggesting that all students are capable of learning and can achieve high levels of competency when teachers delineate their expectations, this digest focuses on Outcome-Based Education (OBE) in the language arts classroom. The digest delineates some of the tenets of OBE, including the necessity of clearly defined objectives, students having…

Finnish university language centers are responsible for testing the foreign language proficiency of nearly all university students. It is important that students are assigned equitably to courses, including Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) courses. It is also important in LSP teaching for students' needs and opinions to be taken into account,…

In order for prospective teachers to become aware of the consequences of their actions and behaviors and to become more reflective about their teaching and their role as teachers, teacher education programs must incorporate interventions that allow novice teachers to become actively involved in the process of applying the theory of teaching to the…

Outlining an integrated language perspective on teaching and learning in the elementary school, this book provides both the theory on which the perspective is based and many examples of how it may be translated into practice. The book illustrates and explains eight thematic units (called "prototypes"), and includes webs, examples,…

The changing face of the workplace and composition of the work force have necessitated new approaches to workplace safety that focus on motivating trainees to learn and practice safe workplace behaviors. Unfortunately, most knowledge regarding work motivation is theoretical and not directly usable by safety training professionals. The notions of…

National education policy reforms often do not translate into changes at the classroom level. This paper presents a conceptual framework developed for Sub-Saharan Africa to assist policy-makers in bridging the gap between school practice and national policies. It also describes how the framework was applied to current school-improvement efforts in…

This paper provides a cross-program view of the results of three successful school improvement programs that regional educational laboratories developed and implemented. The programs and their developers are: (1) A+chieving Excellence from the Mid-Continental Regional Educational Laboratory; (2) Onward to Excellence (OTE) from the Northwest…

Currently, the relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language learning (FLL) is unidirectional, with theory and hypotheses flowing from SLA to FLL, and making FLL a subset of SLA. However, this relationship is an artificial one resting on debatable or even incorrect assumptions. These include the assumptions that: (1)…

Promising instructional development perspectives are synthesized into a set of perspectives that might be discussed by the instructional technology profession to set some new directions for the field. An integrated set of criteria, "Configurational Inquiry Instructional Development Perspective" (CIIDP), is proposed. Configurational…

Information about good practice in classroom teaching is needed to inform educational planners and practitioners of the development and improvement of curricula and teaching and as a resource for further curriculum reform. This paper, part of a study on teacher effectiveness, reports on classroom research in a Malaysian secondary school 4 years…

Beginning in the mid-1960s, thousands of small alternative schools sprang up across the United States and Canada. These schools varied widely in programs and policies, but common factors among them were a disenchantment with conventional schooling, a desire to reform education, and (frequently) the belief that schools should be controlled by the…