For the 1992-93 school year, the Indiana Department of Education awarded planning grants to 10 school corporations and special education cooperatives which applied to be Inclusion School Pilot Sites. Funding was provided for activities related to planning and becoming more inclusive. Visits and interviews at the sites led to conclusions about…

Problem posing is a tool for developing and strengthening critical thinking skills. Freire expanded on the idea of active, participatory education through problem-posing dialogue, a method that transforms the students into critical coinvestigators in dialogue with the teacher. Problem posing begins by listening for students' issues. Teachers…

This document consists of a high school level study unit on decisions that faced the United States with respect to the Soviet Union following World War II. In applying the choices approach to the problem solving, the unit calls upon students to become active participants in the history-making process. To enhance authenticity, the lessons rely on…

Written in Spanish and English (on facing pages), this manual is a practical guide for those interested in forming a worker-owned cooperative. It includes examples based on the personal experience of teaching about cooperativism and worker-owned cooperatives to a group of construction workers with diverse levels of education; vocabulary and…

This practicum was designed to improve preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teachers' group decision making skills in order to encourage program continuity from grade to grade in schools in a culturally diverse metropolitan area. A second aim was to use shared skill building to reduce isolation and improve problem solving among preschool and…

The nature and direction of educational reform and the principal's role in it are examined in this book. Information was gathered from a questionnaire that was mailed to an unspecified number of leading principals and administrators in each of the 50 states. A selected number of the initial respondents participated in a follow-up questionnaire.…

This paper describes the implementation of the School-Based Improvement (SBI) model in the Austin Independent School District (AISD), Texas, which was piloted by a total of 28 schools during the 1990-91 and 1991-92 school years. Evaluation was conducted through a review of campus improvement plans and student achievement data, interviews with six…

This paper outlines a framework designed to help school districts evaluate themselves during the implementation of systemic change. Based on the experiences of districts that participated in the NEA Learning Laboratories Initiative, a process called "rapporteuring" was developed. The process provokes the particular site into serious…

This study used interviews, home visits, observations of parent meetings, and informal discussions to examine parental involvement at a Texas elementary school with a high concentration of Mexican American families. In 1997-98, the school's Parent Involvement Cadre (1995-1997) was replaced with a new system of subject-related and support…

The focus of this study is the effects of a School Improvement Plan (SIP) on an urban elementary school. The school's regular education teachers were required to participate in one of five committees designed to prepare the SIP, which specified goals for improvement and the strategies for reaching them. Classroom observations were used by the…

This microethnographic study examined the perspectives of paraprofessionals assisting students with disabilities in inclusive educational settings. Extensive open-ended individual interviews were conducted with 10 educational technicians from 10 different schools in Maine. Demographic data on paraprofessionals in Maine were also analyzed. The…

School board members' perceptions of the socialization process involved in the learning and development of their roles are described in this report. Methodology involved indepth interviews with 28 school board members from two rural and three suburban public school districts in Pennsylvania and New York, document analysis, and observation.…

This paper describes research needs in light of changes taking place in school-based practice in both general and special education. The tenets of educational reform and societal concerns fueling demands for reform are identified. The context in which changes in educational practices are occurring is described, focusing on evolving relationships…

Educational policy analysts have recognized the need for an educational policy that combines the merits of "top-down" mandates with "bottom-up" teacher discretion. This paper describes the Reading Recovery program as an example of an educational program that balances top-down direction and bottom-up discretion by: (1) providing an overall…

This newsletter issue provides rehabilitation professionals with various information pieces concerning consumer leadership in supported employment of people with disabilities. First, a chart lists five questions concerning self advocacy and supported employment, and provides consumer responses to the questions. A second item describes…