This article reports on a study of pre-service French immersion teachers who were required to compile second language (L2) portfolios as part of their professional development. Documents included a brief biography of the students' lives as speakers and learners of French; an action plan in which students assessed their L2 proficiency and set…

This research examines a community struggling to define the type of education needed for its children. After years of being a minority culture in a much larger school district, a small group of individuals in the community petitioned the state to begin a new school district. Community members indicated a desire for an emphasis on vocational skills…

Dynamic Learning Communities (DLCs) offer an alternative approach to the traditional Instructional Design (ID) format for learning. This paper outlines the concept of a dynamic learning community as an alternative to teacher-controlled or pre-designed instructional systems. DLCs are groups of people, who form a learning community generally…

This curriculum is designed to enable youth and young adults with disabilities to gain greater personal control over their lives by providing them and their families with information and skills that support the exercise of self-determination. The youth/young adult family member with a disability is a full participant in all activities. The…

Empowerment implies that student teachers become more confident and autonomous learners, with more responsibility for, and control over, their learning. Traditionally, student teachers have been a disempowered group, as teacher educators have tended to emphasize the voice of experts rather than novices and the voice of theory rather than practice.…

This paper reviews the conflicting literature on "in loco parentis" as applied to college settings. Specifically, attention is focused on three areas: (1) the roots, origins, and early history of the concept; (2) the concept's apparent demise in the 1960s; and (3) its recent comeback as a hot topic. The doctrine of "in loco…

This paper develops the idea of "the authority of experience" to explain the unease about teacher education represented in comments of 19 graduate students enrolled in a preservice physics education methods course which combined on-campus classes and teaching placements. Interviews with the student teachers after the first half of the…

This paper explores the dynamic nature of the power relationship within social research, concentrating on the production and reproduction of a text of the field and focusing on the processes of recording, writing, and reading. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in a United Kingdom office of an international firm of chartered accountants…

This study used a triangulated methodology involving ethnographic interviews, opinionnaires, and rank ordering of student concerns to discover variables that impacted student teachers as they passed through developmental stages. Data collected from interviews with five elementary student teachers were used to discover a developmental theory of…

This case study represents an attempt to develop knowledge and understanding of "community supports," those formal and informal supports necessary to enable people with disabilities to live in the community and participate fully in community life. The individual in the case study is a white man with severe cerebral palsy born in 1912. The study…

A conceptual framework is presented for discussing teacher autonomy in a historical perspective against the background of a profound decentralization in the Swedish educational system introduced in the early 1980s. The way teachers use a broadened space of action cannot be fully understood unless a distinction is made between private and…

This practicum was designed to establish behavioral and assessment criteria for dealing with seriously emotionally disturbed elementary students enrolled in self-contained emotionally handicapped (EH) units. A primary goal was to provide out-of-field EH teachers with an objective tool for continuously assessing students' individual behavioral and…

Arranged into two parts, the book provides a model for helping students develop a positive self-esteem. Part 1 presents five lessons aimed at improving self-image. Lesson 1 focuses on the relationship between one's self-worth and one's behavior. Lesson 2 deals with appearance and the notion that body characteristics may change one's value as a…

This report describes activities from 1986 through 1990 of the Mastery in Learning Project, which focused on "restructuring the school" and "sharing decision making" at one elementary school in Lewiston, Idaho. Based on need surveys of various constituents of school life (administrators, students, teachers, and parents), a…

Eight issues concerning academic freedom are discussed. The issues are: (1) the question of who should have the right to decide what should be taught; (2) the extent to which school districts should impose specific restrictions on subjects discussed in the classroom; (3) the controversy over the rights of teachers to refuse to teach content that…