This article reviews the education reform and development footprints in China by analyzing four key education policy documents in the past three decades. The conclusion is that the reform and development of China's educational establishment have provided excellent support for the operations of China's political and economic systems. The reality is…

In this study, the merit of using deliberative democratic evaluations is studied in light of ten questions asked by House and Howe, which defined the approach and raise issues of interests, representation, and choice of stakeholders, power balances and procedures for controlling them, participation, reflection and deliberation. Suggestions by…

Music interventions are frequently utilized with those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and have shown a range of benefits. However, empirical evaluations are lacking and would be a timely step forward in the field. Here we report the findings of our pilot music program for adolescents and young adults with ASD. Evaluation of the program…

Transformative graduate education programs (TGP) are programs that are national in scope and are intended to impact the reformation of graduate education in the United States. We employ data from national sources and shift the unit of analysis from the individual doctoral student to the doctoral institution as whole in order to begin to assess the…

This study reports the results on the needs of an emerging population of Career-Technical Education (CTE) teachers in Ohio. The purposes of the study were to determine the needs of the teachers and the effectiveness of the teacher education program they completed to add the CTE license. Twenty six academic teachers added a CTE license through a…

Searching for employment during this recession-battered market has proven difficult for many new college graduates. As unemployment trends and hiring outlooks continue their slow resurgence, the competition for jobs remains fierce, and the students are feeling the pressure. In this article, the author describes Nichols College's new, web-based…

This article reports the evaluation of a 10-week phonologically-based literacy programme involving 10 children with Down syndrome (DS). At the outset, each child relied on a whole word method of reading with no apparent use of decoding strategies. The reading and phonological skills of the children were assessed twice prior to undertaking the…

This article covers the importance of creating and developing agency in community partners when engaging in community-based learning. Often when faculty incorporate service- or community-based learning into their classes, we measure the "learning" part but not the "service" or "community." Focusing more on the latter involves working "with"…

Background: Schools experience a wide range of crime and disorder, victimizing students and staff, and undermining attempts to create a safe and orderly environment for student learning. Police have long established programs with schools, but there has been no systematic review of evaluations of these programs, outside of police-led prevention…

This article reports on a major action research program that experimented with the use of cross-age peer teaching in schools to assist teachers to manage conflict issues in their classrooms, and to re-engage disaffected students in learning. The research, which was conducted in a range of elementary and secondary schools in Australia, was part of…

Early career teacher attrition is a matter of economic, social, and educational concern in many countries. Usually induction programs, including mentoring, are seen to alleviate the problem of early career teacher attrition. Mentoring/induction programs as a solution to what is defined as the problem of early career teacher attrition and retention…

Regular evaluation of archival reference services is essential to ensure that users have appropriate access to the information they need. Archives New Zealand has been measuring customer satisfaction for many years using self-completion questionnaires but recently trialed two new methods of evaluation, using external research companies. One…

This paper examines the evolution and findings of an on-going longitudinal study that is assessing the satisfaction of distance education students with library reference services through the use of a transaction-level survey. The survey's purpose is two-fold: first, it is used to garner valuable input from these students; and second, it also…

Writing is complex, and assessment of writing is equally complex, particularly when considering the need to measure outcomes at the institutional level while providing meaningful data that informs curriculum reform and supports learning at the discipline-level. Using a multi-layered assessment that incorporates standardized measures of writing…

This article examines four influential programs--Citizen Schools, After School Matters, career academies, and Job Corps--to demonstrate the diversity of approaches to career programming for youth. It compares the specific program models and draws from the evaluation literature to discuss strengths and weaknesses of each. The article highlights…