This article summarizes and analyzes 43 pieces of professional literature pertaining to paraprofessional supports for students with disabilities published between 1991 and 2000. The findings identify topical gaps in the literature, review the major data based findings, and present implications for the field. Suggestions for future research stress…

This article introduces this special issue on functional assessment methods and their application to children and youth with autism. It traces the 30-year history of functional assessment and briefly summarizes each of the following articles, noting the common emphasis on social validity and using the science and technology of functional…

Explores how academic institutions and individual professors profiting from patenting faculty research may be endangering the future of science. (EV)

The last decade has seen enormous expansion in the use of psychotropic medications to treat behavioral and emotional disorders in children and adolescents. Because much prescription of these agents is off-label, serious attempts are being made to encourage pharmacological research in children. Without examining the data upon which government…

This chapter addresses the opportunities and challenges of using alumni research in Spain.

This chapter describes how the Kansas Study of Community College Instructional Costs and Productivity can be used in state, institutional, and regional accreditation contexts.

Managing R&D and the innovation process is closely linked with technology transfer and the commercialization of research results. This is especially so in the context of publicly-funded R&D laboratory systems in developing countries, such as India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Inefficiencies in the transfer…

Aiming to encourage longitudinal studies in science education, we clarify conceptual and methodological aspects of longitudinal research. We use the studies that other articles in this issue describe to illustrate these aspects. The illustrations range from attempts to promote long-term change through experimental teaching to investigations that…

In this article we chronicle a particular professional development initiative designed to promote the acquisition of an evaluation habit of mind within an educational context. After describing the rationale behind this initiative in some detail, we proceed to map the experiences of four of the participants--a principal, a vice principal, a…

Interest in strengthening the impact and value of education research has been growing around the world. Here I outline a view of the nature of "impact" and point to instances where research has had a positive impact in education, but always within a larger social and political framework. A three element "model" of research impact is developed and…

Policymakers and educators see professional development as a way to improve the quality of instruction in classrooms across the nation, but the empirical literature linking professional development to improved student achievement is extremely thin. Logically, though, it would seem that the right kinds of professional development would improve…

The simultaneous presence of a revolutionary change in information technologies and a growing demand for fundamental changes in the education system have set in motion a reassessment of the relationship among information, research, and decision making. The International Bureau of Education (IBE) considered it necessary to introduce new elements…

This conference report summarizes presentations and discussions of a workshop on vocational rehabilitation and behavioral and social sciences research, which was intended to promote exchange of information within the research community, better management and planning within research projects sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and…

The 1995 National Household Education Survey (NHES:95) was a random digit dial telephone survey of households developed by the National Center for Education Statistics and conducted by Westat, Inc. The first full-scale implementation of the NHES was in 1991. The NHES:95 included two topical survey components, one called the Adult Education (AE)…

A study investigated how the beliefs of literacy scholars affect the development of basal reading programs, the roles literacy scholars play in the development of new reading programs, and some of the critical factors that affect the disposition of innovative ideas. Two literacy scholars who had actively collaborated on the development of separate…