With nearly a million paraprofessionals working in elementary and secondary schools (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013), ensuring they are well prepared and supported is essential to their and their students' success. Paraprofessionals work closely with classroom teachers to support students from special populations and are typically supervised by…

The nature of effective staff development programs was studied in both business and education with the aim of helping school districts design alternative models of staff development programs for teachers. In the first phase of the study, school districts and businesses known for their reputations for staff development were asked to complete…

Provides an overview of current staff development practices and procedures in Kenya and suggests that teachers and head teachers need staff development opportunities to grow professionally, although current inservice training programs in Kenya are skewed to meet the needs of only a few teachers. Discusses the role of the head teacher in…

Goals 2000 differs from previous educational legislation because it requires systemic reform and partnerships. The article discusses Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, explains how legislation is developed, and examines Goals 2000's main provisions, content and performance standards, role in professional development, and ties…

This study explored resource allocation issues in schools that had moved toward inclusive education. Rather than document or analyze actual costs, the study sought general information related to resource allocation through interviews with local special education administrators in 12 school districts across the United States. Specifically, the…

Six policy issues emerging from a Midwest dissemination conference on the Richardson Study are highlighted. The focus is on facilitating policy initiatives in gifted education among local and state school districts. Policy statements on each of the following issues are cited: improving identification procedures; articulating goals, programs, and…

Professional development for teachers is often described as a journey. This paper, using the findings from a small-scale study interrogating professional development in ICT, offers the alternate metaphor of an interwoven Celtic knot to explain this phenomenon. It will show how the four key elements identified as being critical to creating the most…

Addresses salient questions raised by a research project on interrelationships between adult literacy and English as a Second Language. A basic issue discussed is how "pedagogy" itself should be addressed in this context: i.e., how does it relate to curriculum content and how do theory and practice come together in this area? (Contains…

This document presents an overview and synthesis of the involvement of employers' and employers' organizations in the development of vocational training policy in Europe. Material was gathered through the personal experience of the author and from interviews with those responsible for vocational training in various employers' professional…

This technical assistance document discusses retraining of speech-language personnel and formulating and implementing programs to comply with federal legislation. It addresses priorities in the use of qualified personnel to provide services in schools, planning and implementing of statewide retraining, approaches to retraining to meet the highest…

Personal mobility, which is becoming increasingly necessary in the era of the Internet and the globalization of trade, is a crucial part of the European Union's (EU) goal of becoming a knowledge society. While millions of young people, students, teachers, and trainers have participated in educational, training, and linguistic exchanges in the past…

This report examines the types of professional development necessary to implement successful online learning initiatives. The potential for schools utilizing online learning is tremendous: schools can develop new distribution methods to enable equity and access for all students, they can provide high quality content for all students and they can…

Project Educational Quality in Adult Literacy (EQuAL) was initiated to improve the quality of adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) services provided to adult learners in Pennsylvania. Project EQuAL's objectives were as follows: (1) set performance standards to facilitate delivery of quality ABLE programs to adult learners; (2) institute a…

This document is intended to help learning organizations and practitioners meet the needs of their black and minority ethnic adult students. The introduction explains how the guide was developed and discusses the concept of "color blindness." The next six sections examine the following topics: (1) social and economic issues; (2)…