Family engagement has long been recognized as crucial to a child's overall academic achievement. The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) recognizes that evolving from traditional parental involvement to effective partnerships between families and family-facing practitioners improves learning outcomes for students as a critical practice…

A significant and growing number of universities across the country are pursuing the agenda of public and civic engagement and giving serious consideration to resultant faculty roles. Along with new university commitment come new definitions of scholarship, including the scholarship of engagement. The scholarship of engagement continues to emerge…

This chapter draws on other authors' ideas in this issue, describing parallels and outlining distinctions toward a synthesized model for the development of SoTL initiatives at the institutional level and beyond.

A large and growing body of evidence over the past several decades has shown that school leadership is a key factor in improving school performance and student outcomes. Increasingly, funders and developers of school leadership programs are articulating talent development frameworks, or leadership development pipelines, that conceive of school…

Quality assurance and accreditation are closely tied together. This article documents the work toward a unified and comprehensive national accreditation program in health education. By exploring the accreditation journey of another discipline, the field of gerontology should learn valuable lessons. These include an attention to inclusivity, a…

Finding out what instructional leadership looks like is at the center of a new trend in leadership development: videos of practice. These range from minimally edited videos of a leader's own practice to highly edited clips that focus on successful leadership actions in authentic school settings. While videos of practice are widely used in teacher…

In this article, the characteristics of five test review models are described. The five models are the US review system at the Buros Center for Testing, the German Test Review System of the Committee on Tests, the Brazilian System for the Evaluation of Psychological Tests, the European EFPA Review Model, and the Dutch COTAN Evaluation System for…

Recent large federal investments in services for pregnant women and young children will fuel the expansion of home visiting services across the U.S. The authors summarize the history of home visiting and describe trends toward evidence-based and national program models. Moving to an integrated system requires supports for implementation with…

At the national level, debate about school reform typically has been characterized by clashing paradigms offering unicausal explanations and universal prescriptions. At the street level, where parents and practitioners wrestle on a day-to-day basis with questions of what to do, the terms of discussion more typically are concrete, rooted in local…

There is a call across the country and in Texas to improve health care systems through integrated care. Integrated health care is the systematic coordination of physical and behavioral health services. The idea is that physical and behavioral health problems often occur at the same time and that integrating services will provide the best results…

The methods used in the Teacher Corps Program Evaluation are based principally on the importance of securing the cooperation of local participants during data collection. Several principles concerning local cooperation were established and explained. These included encouraging active participation, encouraging local review of instruments,…

Reviews the history of oracy in the United Kingdom over the past decade, as articulated in significant national curriculum developments. Identifies conflicting models of oracy embedded in these programs, noting erosion of the cross-curricular function of oracy in favor of a centralized oracy, controlled by the teacher and related to literacy. (BT)

Discusses a network of child advocacy councils in Israel in relation to child advocacy efforts in the United States. Describes the Jerusalem Children's Council and the work of its Ombudsman for Children. (RJC)

This paper reviews the promotion of literacy and the development of library services in the multinational, multilingual republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics since the October Revolution as a model for state or regionally centralized services that promote local arrangements while serving a single national purpose in multiethnic and…

Higher education policy-making in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and whether it fits the national policy styles of those countries, is investigated. Aspects of policy change, centralism, consultation, openness, conflict level, and deliberation are discussed. (Author/MLW)