The documents enclosed in this report provide a comprehensive and systematic review of the progress made in developing a network organization capable of supporting nanoscience education for the public on a national scale. There is a logic to the studies that were done and to the reports that are included in this notebook. The following are the…

As the focus on school improvement at a state education agency moves from mostly a compliance approach to playing a greater role in capacity building, the agency's leadership needs to rethink student and learning supports. That is the focus of this report. Given that almost half of the chief state school officers have assumed their position in the…

Flexible Learning in an Information Society uses a flexible learning framework to explain the best ways of creating a meaningful learning environment. This framework consists of eight factors--institutional, management, technological, pedagogical, ethical, interface design, resource support, and evaluation--and a systematic understanding of these…

Middle school transitions can cause a decline in academic achievement and motivation in learning for many students. Low income underrepresented students are especially vulnerable to this transition. Parental involvement also tends to decrease during the middle school years. This qualitative study examined the elementary to middle school transition…

This document is the result of two years of intensive, dedicated work by a remarkable team of nearly two dozen researchers. It takes the first steps on a long overdue journey to fully understanding the realities and promise of ESL program service in community colleges across the nation. The report offers an in-depth look into several community…

This booklet is the fourth in a series that examines community school centers. The development and substance of the building program, issues related to site selection and development, and overall building design strategies are examined. Also discussed are particularly important design details about which the programming committee and the architect…

The United States Congress and the individual states are now placing high priorities on supplying school facilities for the handicapped. This book is a comprehensive synthesis of what is unique and different about exceptional children and youth, of what modes of teaching and learning are necessary for their instruction, and of what contributions…

Individually and collectively, institutions of higher education possess considerable resources--human, fiscal, organizational, and intellectual--which are critical to addressing significant social issues. Additionally, these institutions are physically rooted in their communities. Therefore, investing in the betterment of their immediate…

Limited information is available regarding the factors that promote persistence by women in engineering programs. Stated simply, the problem is that the number of women engineers continues to fall short in comparison to the gender ratio of women to men in the population in the U.S. (BEST, 2002) and worldwide (Hersh, 2000). More women engineers are…

Cohorts are increasingly popular management tools for recruiting students into professional education programs, for organizing their learning experiences, for promoting performance-based outcomes, and for developing and using innovative teaching-learning practices. This article examines issues about the effects of learning in cohorts by focusing…

Interviews with 16 general special education teachers from the Chicago area were conducted in order to obtain information on their views and experiences with collaboration. An open-ended questionnaire consisting of nine items was utilized during the interviews, which required the participants to give multiple sentence responses to each question.…

The purpose of this study was to examine principals' perceptions and practices regarding bullying prevention. A survey instrument was developed to assess principals' stages of change and perceived barriers regarding selected bullying prevention activities as well as the effectiveness of bullying prevention activities. Of a national random sample…

The overarching aim of this research in the proposal was the following: In a number of early childhood centres and early years school classrooms that have already begun to explore in this area, to investigate effective pedagogy designed to develop five learning competencies over time. This project was developed in response to curriculum reform in…

Strengthening the innovation system in the Netherlands is a priority for raising productivity growth, which has been relatively weak in recent years. Knowledge creation in the Netherlands is strong -- scientific publications per capita are the sixth highest in the OECD -- but innovation activity is only around the average for OECD countries…

The National Accessible Reading Assessment Projects (NARAP) is a collaboration of two projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education to conduct research and development on accessible reading assessments for students with disabilities that affect reading. The goal of these projects is to produce research findings and assessment techniques that…