Colleges implement success courses to improve student outcomes. Since expanding its curriculum to include nine success courses, Illinois Eastern Community Colleges (IECC)--a multi-college community college district in rural, southeastern Illinois--has not determined the efficacy of these courses on student success. The purpose of this study was to…

Teachers present their perceptions when designing and mapping curriculum to implement standards-based instruction and assessment. It appears that teachers are willing but not always able to make curriculum and instructional decisions. Participation of teachers varies from district to district. When curriculum is given to teachers as part of their…

The classroom, with its complex social structure and kaleidoscope of cognitive and phycho-sociological variables, has not often been the object of serious research. Content area specialists have concentrated on the sequential organization of materials and have left the direct applications of these materials, either to the intuitive strategies of…

For many years, schools of social work have engaged in partnerships, especially with public child welfare agencies, to prepare a competent and professional child welfare workforce through the mechanism of Title IV-E training. In 2008 the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) established an additional resource for preparing students in…

In a small suburban district in the Midwest, the superintendent was outlining his plans for aligning the curriculum to the Common Core State Standards. The process had begun, he explained, so he and his staff were set to spend the next three years on math, then three years on English language arts and so on. The author struggled with the concept…

Leadership educators must decide upon the theoretical paradigms and curricular approaches in which to locate their leadership programs and inform their practice. This application article features the mosaic approach adopted by Bradley University which places many and divergent pieces together to allow students to experience different conceptual…

This article describes how to implement the four-phase curriculum review model, a simplified process for renovating a high school health and physical education curriculum. Although this model was used at a large suburban high school, it could be adapted for use by smaller schools or other disciplines. The four phases of this model are: (1) needs…

Focusing on skills and attitudes necessary for responsible action, the handbook describes responsibility education programs for students and suggests resources for promoting program development. Responsibility education is defined as a process which gives students enriched school-directed citizenship experiences. Responsibility education…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

In Crystal Lake, Illinois, the Office of Curriculum and the teachers comprising the Curriculum Council of the district struggled for three years with the development of a sensible format for categorizing the importance of the many parts of the school's total instructional program. A working model was developed and is described here as the Crystal…

This report concerns integrating academic and occupational instruction at the community college level. Such integration would be conducive to preparing a competitive workforce, providing a broader educational foundation, shifting from teaching to learning, and building bridges between disciplines in the community college. There are several…

A PLANNED, RIGOROUS SEARCH WAS CONDUCTED FOR A CONCEPTUAL SYSTEM BY MEANS OF WHICH THE CENTRAL PROBLEMS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT AND INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATION ARE IDENTIFIED AND RELATED TO EACH OTHER. EACH SEGMENT OF THE RATIONALE FORMULATED WAS RELATED TO AND CONTINUALLY CHECKED AGAINST PERTINENT RESEARCH AND RELATED STUDIES DURING THE…

Provides a model for the Career Specific Basic Education curriculum development process for joint use by teachers of a career content area and teachers of basic education. Components of the model described are task analysis, preliminary assessment of basic education competencies, the curriculum development team, collecting materials, and…

A major concern of educators in Illinois and elsewhere is that students be given the opportunity to master the basic skills of reading, communication, computation, and problem solving. It is important for school districts to recognize this concern on a local level by including in the program plan for their districts student goals which mention…