A liberal arts environment invites the expansion of one's understanding of himself/herself and the world by exposing him/her to multiple disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. For its part, the topic of "narrative" is intrinsically interdisciplinary and, as such, can be explored to particular advantage within a liberal arts…

The notion of interdisciplinarity in higher education raises significant questions about the very nature of knowledge and knowing. Are there fundamental knowledge bases associated with particular disciplines that cannot be understood through interdisciplinary teaching and learning? Or is there a common knowledge base across the disciplines that…

Madison Elementary School, a K-6 school of 335 students in Marshfield, Wisconsin, recognizes the value of student feedback and strives to learn more through monthly student meetings, whole-class sit-downs, and student exit interviews. As the principal of Madison Elementary School, the author meets with a group of students for half an hour during…

In the fall of 2009, Michigan State University (MSU) implemented a new policy regarding reports of undergraduate academic dishonesty. Under the new system, instructors are required to submit an academic dishonesty report for any student that they penalize for violations of academic integrity, and these students are placed into a remediation class…

The consequences of less than proficient reading skills are well documented. In educational settings, as children progress through the grades, the expectation that they acquire content knowledge through reading continually increases. However, many children lack the proficient reading skills that would enable them to acquire content knowledge…

Gathering high school completer and dropout data and maintaining annual records provides longitudinal information on students which allows a district to observe its unique patterns of school dropouts. That information may assist schools to target prevention and intervention programs and policies that focus on local circumstances and address the…

Louisiana developed a time frame for compiling the State Performance Plan with as much opportunity for broad stakeholder input as possible before the required submission date. Bearing in mind the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, Louisiana's Steering Committee projected performance targets through the year 2014 for the…

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work…

Multilevel modeling offers researchers a rich array of tools that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as analyzing specific institutional issues, looking for macro-level trends, and helping to shape and inform educational policy. One of the more complex multilevel modeling tools available to institutional researchers is cross-classified…

Transformative graduate education programs (TGP) are programs that are national in scope and are intended to impact the reformation of graduate education in the United States. We employ data from national sources and shift the unit of analysis from the individual doctoral student to the doctoral institution as whole in order to begin to assess the…

Many students enter large comprehensive high schools without having the necessary social and academic skills or understanding of what will be expected of them as they move through the high school curriculum. To help a higher number of students experience success, schools must help them develop academic, social, and self-management skills.…

Background: To gain more insight into the antecedent factors of restraint in institutionalised people with intellectual disability (ID), the role played by several demographic and psychological client variables was investigated. Methods: The data of 475 people (age range 12-95 years) who were residents in a Dutch institution for people with ID…

This study examined the perceptions of a cross section of new and experienced assistant principals regarding the realities of their jobs. Findings indicated that their challenges pertain to workload and task management, conflicts with adults and students, and curriculum and instruction issues. Novice and experienced assistant principals' responses…

This study presents the findings of a content analysis of 120 high school-level, written discipline policies collected from six states. Suspension was commonly offered as a response for all behaviors, including minor ones. Discipline policies varied by state in terms of the degree to which suspension was featured. Based on these findings and…

The authors present a case study of a world history teacher's mediation of her students' world historical thinking and writing through unit-level cognitive tools. They analyze both scaffolding and disciplinary tools that the teacher constructed for her students in order to improve their world historical thinking, and the degree to which the…