A practicum was designed to increase participation of families in home-school literacy activities. The school was located in a suburban village in the northeastern United States. Data indicated that many families of first- and second-grade minority students who were bused to the school for integration purposes were not participating in home-school…

This practicum developed a program to enhance the job performance of support personnel (behavior modification technicians) who work with students having conduct disorders. The behavior modification technicians provided building-level support for principals and teachers working with black adolescents from socially deprived backgrounds. Inservice…

A practicum was designed to increase the expertise of primary teachers in the creation of developmentally appropriate reading/writing curriculum for the multi-age, multi-ability, primary classroom through literacy training staff development sessions. The system of literacy training was constructed over a period of eight months with 34 primary…

Because hospitalization is often a frightening and traumatic experience for children and their families, a practicum designed a system of inservice training experiences for hospital personnel. These experiences were intended to enhance or develop skills that would assist them in addressing the needs and concerns of hospitalized children and their…

A 10-week training program in a private nonprofit residential treatment program for children and youth was designed to help a treatment team increase its team functioning skills as measured by a pre- and post-training survey of individual and team effectiveness. The treatment program was located in a rural community and served people from eight…

The adult basic education (ABE) program at Nicolet Area Technical College (NATC) evaluated its training and development (T&D) process for new basic education instructors. The study gathered monitoring and screening criteria that addressed valuable components for use in an instrument for validating effectiveness of the ABE program (T&D)…

A practicum was designed to increase the lines of positive and effective communication between parents and teachers in a preschool setting. Poor parent-teacher communication (due to lack of knowledge or experience) was documented. The program sought to improve communication regarding the child's developmental and personal progress. The 8-month…

A 5-year Title III grant received by Northern Maine Technical College (NMTC) in 1989 provided funding for professional development (PD) activities at the college. To evaluate the impact of the grant and plan for the continuation of the professional development program, a study was conducted in 1994 near the end of the grant period. Following a…

This practicum was designed to increase the number of elementary school students eligible for placement in a gifted program by improving the prescreening process. Major goals were to: (1) improve teachers' ability to identify giftedness in children; (2) improve the referral rate for gifted screening; and (3) increase the identification and…

This practicum was designed to train special education teachers and paraprofessionals at a private, special education facility in ways to identify precursor behaviors and antecedent events eliciting maladaptive behaviors in children with developmental disorders and behavior disorders. Staff were given five inservice sessions (totalling 10 hours)…

This practicum report describes an intervention to improve children's experiences of transitions to and from a day care center and from one activity to another throughout the day. Training workshops for parents and staff were held for 32 weeks. The purpose of the training, which included lectures for large groups and meetings for small groups, was…

In 1990, a study was conducted to holistically evaluate the activities of the Employee Development Program at Paradise Valley Community College (PVCC) and to determine if employee groups differed significantly in their evaluations of the effectiveness of the activities. Of the 114 full- and part-time board-approved employees of PVCC, 86 (75%)…

Daycare directors in northern Canada, with little or no post-secondary education, face the difficulties of programming for children from diverse cultures. Directors often feel isolated in their small communities, and a lack of programming expertise and early childhood development training for them has become a concern. This practicum designed,…

This practicum identified the problem of inconsistent use of developmentally appropriate practices by staff in an early childhood center and implemented an inservice program to increase the use of activities based on individual appropriateness rather than on age alone. The solution strategy utilized a self-assessment survey of classroom practices…

This report discusses a practicum designed to offer support strategies to 55 at-risk students in the eighth grade, 53 of whom indicated they were unable to read their present textbooks even with teachers' help and guidance. The major goals of the intervention were to assist the at-risk students in achieving a score of 70 percent in all content…