America's Promise Alliance recommends that all sectors of society work together to ensure all young people have a 21st century education in which service-learning and civic involvement are components. This policy/practice brief explores service-learning as a place-based family-strengthening strategy that develops the capacity of youth as a core…

Various traditions within developmental science and psychology have concentrated on either personal or collective correlates as manifestations of well-being. The authors' claim is that the well-being of any one person is highly dependent on the well-being of her relationships and on the community in which she resides. Well-being may be defined as…

In October 1994 the President signed into law the "Improving America's Schools Act." Title I, the largest primary and secondary federal education program was reauthorized by this legislation, which, among other things rewrote the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The reauthorized law provides parents, advocates, and school…

Nine articles discuss the nature and structure of public scholarship. The articles are: (1) "Divided No More" by Parker J. Palmer, who urges academics to act publicly on their convictions; (2) "The Public Intellectual as Transgressor?" by William M. Sullivan, who urges the reinvention of a "public" orientation to…

This handbook is intended for communities that wish to undertake their own community impact assessment (CIA). The goal is to enable communities to plan for changes before they occur, so they can cope with changes when they do occur. CIA involves forecasting and evaluating the full range of unintended consequences for the community of development…

The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) examined three types of literacy--prose, document, and quantitative--among the entire older adult population and various subgroups thereof. Of the nationally representative sample of 26,091 adults interviewed during the NALS, 2,267 were aged 60-69, 1,005 were aged 70-79, and 442 were at least 80 years…

This report describes a program for building and reinforcing character development in order to increase appropriate student-to-student and student-to-teacher behaviors. The targeted population consists of primary and intermediate elementary students in a growing middle class community in Elk Grove, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The problems of…

This document consists of one volume (3 issues) of a serial devoted to law-related education (LRE) that offers background information on a wide range of legal issues with teaching strategies for LRE. The themes for the issues include: (1) character education; (2) conflict resolution; and (3) the 1996 election. Each issue proposes teaching methods…

This Summary Guide to the third Annual Report of the National Education Goals Panel continues the commitment of the Panel to let the American people know the results being achieved in education. Facts about performance are presented, with tangible guidance about what each citizen can do to make the Goals a reality. The National Education Goals…

In rural coastal communities, trade-offs between conserving and developing environmentally sensitive resources are acute. At the community level, part-time volunteers and citizen officials are asked to make complex decisions based on ambiguous and frequently contradictory "scientific" evidence of economic and environmental relationships.…

This book contains lessons that teach students about rights and responsibilities through activities designed to develop character and community. Students are encouraged to learn about the concepts of human rights and responsibilities, and being environmentally responsible citizens. The book employs a variety of learning strategies, allowing for…

In October 1992, the Water and Sanitation for Health (WASH) Project held a workshop to explore how the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) could incorporate community participation as a core element in projects to improve water supply, sanitation, and other environmental conditions of peri-urban areas in developing countries. The…

This writing resource book offers ideas for sharing stories, turning them into text, and reaching a wider audience through simple publishing processes in community settings and through group processes. Chapter 1 shows how the "Building Canberra" project, on which the book is based, came about. It discusses the policy framework in which…

Designed to help high school students, this curriculum guides youngsters to develop a better understanding of difficult issues raised by questions of justice. It is hoped that the ideas, observations, questions, and procedures students learn in the curriculum will help them to make informed decisions about how to promote justice and combat…

This guide was designed for teachers to help students recognize and develop their responsibilities to society. The concepts focused on include: respect for citizenship, respect for people of other cultures, respect for people of all ages, respect for people who have a handicap, respect for work, respect for being a wise consumer, and respect for…