This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

This First Look report presents findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2007 data collection, which included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2007-08 academic year, Completions covering the period July 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, and 12-Month Enrollment covering academic year…

This is the latest edition of the "State of the States in Developmental Disabilities" study--a thorough and the only one of its kind investigation on public spending, revenues, and programmatic trends of intellectual and developmental programs and services within the United States since 1977. Directed by leading researcher, Dr. David…

Developmentally appropriate research techniques were uncovered by involving ten Year 7 pupils as researchers in a four-hour workshop that investigated the effectiveness of multiple methods in gathering sensitive information from early adolescents. The pupils learned about, tried and evaluated the methods of generating interview questions, peer and…

Advances in technology provide researchers with increased opportunities to locate and conduct research with populations that have historically been inaccessible. This manuscript describes the development of private, voluntary web-based groups, and the process for using web cameras to conduct individual web-based interviews as a method of data…

This qualitative study highlighted student perspectives on barriers to success at a community college located in a south Texas city. The study examined barriers to student success, the knowledge that successful students possess to overcome the barriers, and the actions that successful students undertake to overcome the barriers. Padilla's (2004)…

Introduction: Mentoring is a central component of professional development. Evaluation of "successful" mentoring programs, however, has been limited and mainly focused on measures of satisfaction with the relationship. In today's environment, mentoring programs must produce tangible outcomes to demonstrate success. To address this issue,…

The effects of data-gathering methods on pragmatic data have been well documented, yet an inquiry into the interactive effects of assessment tasks with pragmatic instruction has received scant attention. This study investigated the interaction between two assessment tasks (e-mail and phone) and two types of pragmatic instruction (explicit and…

National background of users may influence the process of technology acceptance. The present study explored this issue with the new, integrated technology use model proposed by Sun and Zhang (2006). Data were collected from samples of college students in India, Mauritius, Reunion Island, and United States. Questionnaire methodology and…

This "First Look" presents findings from the Human Resources (HR) Component of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) winter 2009-10 data collection. The HR component consists of the following three sections: Employees by Assigned Position (EAP) and Fall Staff (S) for fall 2009 and Salaries (SA) for academic year…

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence-resilient school. In six inner-city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how participatory design methodologies can be used for the design of interactive learning tools for children. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents the methodology employed for the design of a multimedia tool for teaching Greek to young children aged 6 to 12. The preliminary data collection…

Faculty learning communities provide an authentic forum through which to engage academics from diverse backgrounds in the scholarship of teaching, learning, and curriculum practice. The authors examine the development and impact of FLC strategies that were employed in an 8-month faculty certificate program on the scholarship of teaching and…

The culture at the authors' institution raised barriers to changing from traditional assessment to portfolio assessment in the doctoral program. A Culture of Independence presented barriers of time and functional inadequacy. A Culture of Compliance raised trust, group process, and membership issues. These barriers were managed and overcome using…

Purpose: The purpose of this action research is to gain insight into how people learn to think systemically. An examination of the themes that emerged from this action research will be undertaken. Design/methodology/approach: An action research approach was adopted which involved the collection and reading of 120 journals that were kept by…