This investigation documents an intervention that successfully counteracted a grade inflation trend at a small, Catholic, liberal arts university in the eastern United States. The intervention produced a significant drop in grades awarded by full-time faculty, but not by adjunct faculty who were not yet included in the intervention. Institutional…

This paper reports the findings of a study commissioned by the Scottish Executive which examined the introduction and implementation of local area co-ordination (LAC) in Scotland. A questionnaire about their posts was completed by 44 local area co-ordinators, interviews were conducted with 35 local area co-ordinators and 14 managers and case…

Over the last decade or so, faculty in a wide range of disciplines have become more interested in and open to the scholarship of teaching and learning. That scholarship has taken many forms, including personal accounts of experimentation and change, descriptions of recommended practices, and quantitative research on students' gains. In this…

The 2007-2008 school year marked the first year Florida's Title I schools that did not made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for five consecutive years entered into restructuring as mandated by the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. My study examines the perceptions of teacher entering into their first year of school restructuring due to…

This report uses the three-component framework to categorize and synthesize major recommendations to Congress for the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) reauthorization and briefly analyzes them from the perspective of the third component. The analysis illuminates fundamental gaps in the prevailing recommendations. In particular, this…

Tasks provide a framework for communicative performance. Underlying each task is a set of learning opportunities--potential activities for learning. Not all of these opportunities are exploited for learning by teachers or learners. It is proposed that, when using tasks, the range of such learning opportunities needs to be identified and modelled…

Process improvement and organizational development go hand-in-hand. Building out your organizational process infrastructure will provide the tools necessary to build and maintain effective processes. It takes time, effort, and persistence to get through the initial stages, but the foundational steps of process awareness set the stage for later…

In the past few years, numerous states have initiated school improvement programs. These programs have included any or all of the following characteristics: (1) teacher and administrator certification and competency tests; (2) school-based planning; (3) staff development; (4) student assessment; (5) revised curricula and instructional strategies;…

The Arizona Principals' Academy was first held in 1984 to enable principals to share practices promoting school effectiveness and to personalize their roles as instructional leaders. The goals of the program included informing the principals of current thinking, practices, and strategies; providing practical training to meet identified needs;…

Two hundred and sixty-eight school administrators attended the 1985 Arizona Principals' Academy to share practices promoting school effectiveness and to personalize their roles as educational leaders. The academy's five major goals were (1) to inform principals about current thinking and practices, (2) to provide ways to implement successful…

The report describes a 2-year project that tested new approaches to helping workers better their lives and promote their careers by advancing their education. Through the cooperative efforts of industrial management and labor unions in Middlesex County in New Jersey, the New Jersey Department of Labor and Industry, with the assistance of the Labor…

In 1968 an orientation conference was held by the Educational Improvement Component of the Regional Education Laboratory for the Carolinas and Virginia (RELCV) to explore the problems and opportunities facing young teachers. The administrators and new teachers discussed such matters as typical problems of instruction in their institutions, the…

Discusses how performance technologists, or trainers, can provide more impact in reducing field performance deficiencies by gathering feedback from the field regarding training matters. A feedback generator is described that is expressed in terms of an algorithm and helps point to solutions to improve productivity. (LRW)

Outlines a 10-step process for designing performance improvement systems which is intended to reduce time spent on the project, to assure client approval, and to assure management support. Client participation with the consultant throughout the process is stressed as the key to success. (LRW)

Author suggests a framework of physical education activities, but in each of which students compete only against their own best record. (GB)