This handbook provides a global overview of the design, implementation and assessment of academic development centers within higher education institutions. The current nature of our complex, rapidly changing world makes it imperative that colleges and universities worldwide find ways to educate their students in new and better ways: this is…

"Strategic Inquiry" is an innovative model for promoting teacher collaboration around identifying specific "learning gaps" that keep struggling students from succeeding. Gaps may include anything from the proper use of commas and conjunctions to concepts such as "slope" in math. The authors argue that addressing these…

Change is inevitable and essential to any functioning institution. But change can be stressful, especially when it upsets established routines and patterns. Library managers need to be able to lead staff through episodes of change while remaining empathetic, and this book shows them how to: (1) Engage library staff in the process and encourage…

The quest for school improvement is old. The demand for dramatic, immediate school improvement is new. Even as President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan commit $4.3 billion to making 5,000 of the nation's worst-performing schools better now, few people know what that really looks like--or how it actually works. How do school…

This book fills a significant void in the research on ethnic minority cultural centers, offers the historic background to their establishment and development, considers the circumstances that led to their creation, examines the roles they play on campus, explores their impact on retention and campus climate, and provides guidelines for their…

Since 1988 the education system in England has been subjected to wave upon wave of radical change and reform. Despite significant investments and some successes, this programme contains so many serious weaknesses that it is doing more harm than good and it should be fundamentally redesigned. However, before any new programme of reform is…

In the last decade, the Boston Public Schools has undergone critical reforms that have been of intense interest to school leaders and policymakers throughout the country. Under the leadership of superintendent Thomas Payzant, the Boston schools implemented extensive reform strategies that yielded notable results. Fittingly, at the end of Payzant's…

This report of the Panel on Quality Improvement in Student Financial Aid Programs examines the quality control of federal student financial aid programs covered by Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 and offers recommendations calling for sweeping revisions of the present system. The report explores: (1) the quality control practices…

Drawing from research studies and observations from successful schools, this book debunks many common myths about school leadership and offers more reliable leadership guideposts to steer by: (1) Why focusing on results only can lead to misperceptions about your school's true performance; (2) How to use a Leadership for Learning Framework to…

This book explores why past efforts to reform the human services system have had marginal impact in improving the quality of life for children and families, and offers new directions for future social service reform. Chapter 1 examines the sociopolitical antecedents of service integration that have emerged from the uniquely democratic experience…

The model proposed in this book specifies that there are four types of interrelated practices that determine the extent to which accountability is realized. These are (1) the identification of primary accountability agents and their respective program responsibilities, (2) the execution of internal program reviews by those program officers, (3)…

This collection of readings in support of inclusive education for students with disabilities offers rationales for inclusion, personal accounts of individuals involved, and strategies for facilitating change. Stressed throughout is the idea that inclusion is an attitude or belief system, not an action or set of actions. The readings identify…

Intended to help teachers, researchers, curriculum developers, and administrators develop improved policy in reading instruction and research, this book challenges several widespread assumptions about effective reading instruction and concludes with 20 policy guidelines which can be used to evaluate existing reading programs and redesign them to…

The method of teaching physical education described in this book integrates current knowledge of how and why people learn into an individualzied instruction model. It is hoped that this humanistic approach to teaching physical education will overcome the problems of group instruction and stimulate greater possibilities of accomplishment. The…

Integrative education is defined as education that promotes learning and teaching in nonfragmented ways that embrace notions of holism, complexity, and interconnection. Furthermore, integrative education embraces the links, rather than the divisions, between the academic disciplines (e.g., arts and sciences) and between various subjective and…