Graduates of Sudbury Valley School (Framingham, Massachusetts) relate their learning experiences, including the positive relationships they developed with adults, their active role in school administration, the importance of play to their learning, the values they acquired as a result of their schooling, and how their experiences prepared them for…

In many school districts, student services and instructional programs designed to address youth risk behaviors have tended to operate in isolation due to their being organized around categorical funding and professional disciplines. The framework outlined here is a multistrategy approach which seeks to organize schools' efforts to address the…

This study looks at the higher education learning needs of population subgroups by reviewing research concerning the classroom experiences of minority group students and women. The importance of addressing these questions is raised by the current and expected growth in ethnic minorities in the United States. Findings indicate that Black students…

A pilot study of retention at a large, residential, Ph.D.-granting institution employed causal modeling (LISREL) to examine the effects of institutional variables (academic and social climate) on student retention within the causal structure specified by the Tinto model. Scales constructed from Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and…

Attendance in "open" versus "traditional" schools is shown to have small positive effects on student satisfaction with school life and student self-reliance, while differences in family authority structures are found to be of much more importance for these outcomes when student social class characteristics are statistically controlled. Two…

Engagement is a potentially useful construct for organizing strategies to support adjustment, achievement and retention in school, particularly among our most vulnerable student populations. Even if high quality schooling is available, high levels of achievement will implicitly demand engagement on the part of students. This initial analysis,…

With teacher assistance and computer availability, composition students may use the World Wide Web as a valuable learning tool in the networked composition classroom and during personal studying time. The paper offers a list of six online providers and the number of subscribers for each. The paper then presents 118 selected web sites, including:…

This study examined the impact of diversity on students' self-perceived improvement in the abilities necessary to contribute positively to a pluralistic democracy. It noted how such diversity-related campus activities as exposure to multicultural curricula and opportunities to study and interact with diverse peers affected student development. The…

This paper discusses methods for providing students from diverse home environments with essential educational experiences. It emphasizes the importance of patience in teaching children comprehension and offers guidelines for fostering children's development of comprehension, memory, and evaluative and relational thinking skills. (PB)

Involvement in various college activities and educational gains of black students (n=1,200) attending a historically white institution were compared. Involvement in academic activities had a greater impact on gains of students at the black institution, and social engagement was more important for black students at the white institution. (Author)

Since 2002, the New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (NMSBVI) in Alamogordo, New Mexico, has worked to create a partnership with the "Centro de Capacitacion para Invidentes" in Durango, Mexico, and the "Instituto de Asesoria y Apoyo para Ciegor" in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The purpose of this association was to…

This article details the challenges that UC Merced faced in building up the critical areas of student and residence life. The new institution held great promise for achieving the ideal of a student-centered university, but certain bedrock problems proved difficult to overcome. One was that at the beginning, both administration and faculty saw…

Designed to help improve the staff-to-student communication style in schools, this book shows practitioners how to go from adversarial approaches to caring and helping--without losing control of the situation. The book offers time-tested methods that counselors and therapists have used successfully for years, methods that can be modified for…

This study examines the relative stability and change in ethnic students' (Asian, Black, and Hispanic) social and academic expectations during their first year at the University of Massachusetts. The paper investigates how students' expectations were met by their actual experiences and whether students of different racial or ethnic categories…

In an attempt to make basic social science education more responsive to the needs of students in a rapidly changing society, the authors developed and conducted an experimental course entitled "Economics and Politics in a Changing Society" (EPICS). The goals of this course include improvement in thinking ability and creativeness, progress in…