The 9-month school year with a 3-month summer vacation had its origin in our earlier agrarian life. Today's teacher shortages, overcrowded schools, and pressures to learn demand extensions of the school year. This publication analyzes five programs: (1) a staggered-vacation school year for all, (2) a full 48-week school year for all, (3) a…

Research studied the effectiveness of class lecture as compared to telelecture, and the association between amount learned and the personal and situational factors of age, level of education, time of day, and attitude. Pretests and posttests collected level of knowledge and personal information from 71 women during a short course on Money…

Mixed mode study, allowing students to switch between full- and part-time status according to personal needs, is evaluated in a program designed to remedy underachievement. The contributions of recent developments in credit accumulation, assessment of prior learning, and learning contracts are discussed. (MSE)

Effective school principles can help provide successful programs for American Indians. Principles include a clear school mission, assessment of comprehensive needs and monitoring of student progress, appropriate curriculum and instruction, opportunity to learn, time spent on task, high expectations, safe and supportive school environment, good…

Successful block scheduling depends on provision of initial and ongoing instructional training. Teaching strategies should vary and include cooperative learning, the case method, the socratic seminar, synectics, concept attainment, the inquiry method, and simulations. Recommendations for maximizing block scheduling are outlined. (Contains 52…

A study compared outcomes of master's programs in public administration and other professional-education programs organized in cohort (intact student groups in lock-step course patterns) and noncohort formats. Students in cohort format had cognitive and affective learning gains equivalent or superior to traditional format students. Learning gains…

In 2002, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) initiated an innovative and ambitious program for improving student learning through the effective use of instructional technology. Until that point, most technology projects in schools were geared toward integrating technology into the curriculum, and they tended to focus on…

Spatial abilities are fundamental to human functioning in the physical world. Spatial reasoning allows people to use concepts of shape, features, and relationships in both concrete and abstract ways, to make and use things in the world, to navigate, and to communicate. Surgeons, pilots, architects, engineers, mechanics, builders, farmers, trades…

Flexible scheduling in school libraries can provide a mechanism for achieving the learning goals and objectives of both the school library program and the curriculum by making information available at the point of need and by promoting use of the library and its services at a relevant moment instead of on a predetermined schedule. This pilot study…

Although research has confirmed block scheduling's nonacademic benefits, effects on academic achievement are mixed. Teachers do not always replace lecturing with more effective participatory teaching methods. To work best under an intensive or alternating block schedule, schools should adapt the math curriculum to reduce course redundancy and…

Some school reform programs, such as the "Copernican Plan," advocate long blocks of classroom instruction time to allow greater instructional flexibility and active student participation in classroom work. This study investigated the effectiveness of this strategy by examining the perceptions of high school teachers who were entering or…

A French language immersion weekend housed in an off-campus college lodge and accommodating 12 college students has been successfully implemented by the State University College of New York at Fredonia. The goals of the weekend experiences have been: the development of listening and speaking skills; creation of a cultural atmosphere of the…

A meta-analysis of inservice teacher education research determines the significance of the following factors for learning effectiveness: training objectives, training duration, training group characteristics, location and scheduling, sponsorship, participant incentives, structure, and instructional technique. Suggestions to help staff developers…

TO DETERMINE THE MOST EFFICIENT USES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SPEECH CORRECTIONIST'S SKILLS AND TIME, A STUDY WAS UNDERTAKEN TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE INTERMITTENT SYSTEM AND THE BLOCK SYSTEM OF SCHEDULING SPEECH CASES. WITH THE INTERMITTENT SYSTEM THE CORRECTIONIST IS ASSIGNED TO A NUMBER OF SCHOOLS AND GENERALLY SEES CHILDREN TWICE A…

A study compared scores on identical tests in internal medicine for two groups of graduating University of Toronto (Canada) medical students: those in a traditional, lecture-based curriculum (TC) and those in a redesigned curriculum with less didactic instruction and more clinical experience (NC). All comparisons showed a significantly higher…