This paper reviews the literature on effective schools from the rural teacher's viewpoint. While research on rural education has frequently focused on economic and structural issues, the teacher is the key to the quality of rural education. However, rural teachers encounter more stressful teaching conditions than urban or suburban teachers,…

The use of a combination of traditional cognitive admissions criteria and noncognitive variables in predicting retention of college students is discussed. The focus is on improving prediction by analyzing various subgroups separately rather than using the entire population as a sample. The subjects were freshmen in the fall semester of 1978 at a…

Staff development in the public schools has become a serious concern only since the 1970s. Staff development is not inservice education, although it includes inservice teacher education. Rather, staff development should be a process by both administrators and teachers who set goals to improve the school or school system and meet the needs of…

The domino effect of illiteracy can be halted if students are given opportunity early in life to develop a positive attitude toward reading. Research supports the notion that reading interests lead to knowledge, which leads, in turn, to increased comprehension. Motivational ideas include using trade books and literature as collateral material in…

Examining the impact of computers in language arts instruction, this journal issue focuses on the practical classroom use of computers. The essays discuss the following topics: (1) using the personal computer to organize the language arts curriculum; (2) computers in a writing project; (3) the potential of microcomputers for English classrooms;…

A study of the kinds of requests for foreign language information made by adult students of Spanish, and a comparison of the kinds of inquiries made by students aged 19 to 23 and those over 55 years, are reported. The objective was to learn more about what language learning processes are contributing to the difference in success of the two groups.…

Five articles on higher education in Australia and New Zealand are presented, along with two review articles. "Australian Higher Education Research and Society. Part I: Post-War Reconstruction and Expansion, 1940-1965" (D. S. Anderson and E. Eton) is a review of research on higher education in Australia and New Zealand since World War…

Intended to assist classroom teachers with promoting and improving children's writing, this book allows teachers to see other professionals and children solve problems that arise in the midst of both teaching and writing. In one sense it is a collection of workshops with the first part of the book emphasizing teacher activity and the second part…

This is the final 1982-1983 evaluation of Upward Reach, a project in Cleveland's 12 high schools that provides educational, vocational, and behavioral counseling to students who are identified as potential dropouts or who are returned to school from court agencies. Twelve fulltime counselor aides provide students with individual counseling…

Provided here is an interim evaluation, for the school year 1982-83, of the Motivational-Cultural Experiences project of the Cleveland Public Schools. The purpose of the project is to provide activities which enhance and enrich the experiences of urban children, grades K-12, by transporting them to local cultural facilities for performances of…

This paper deals with different support systems available for teachers and stresses the importance of inservice teacher education. The first section discusses teachers' support systems, which usually include six domains: self, family, friends, job, community, and profession. Five models are used to describe the intensity of support of each domain…

This workbook on life planning, the first in a series of three vocational career orientation self-developmental units, was designed for use at the junior high school level. Explained first are the goals of the series of workbooks, their structure, and the nature and scope of the activities provided in them. The second section consists of specific…

This manual describes a project developed to assist schools to help low-motivated students to increase their attendance and motivation, and to help reduce dropouts by enhancing students' self-image and increasing their success experiences in school. Each chapter contains a step-by-step outline for developing each stage of the program: (1) student…

Research on how students in a university composition class generate and use ideas not only yielded data on the process of invention, but also altered the structure of the course and the teacher-researcher's attitudes toward teaching writing. To facilitate the study of invention, researchers instituted several changes in the course format. They…

This document describes responses by Native American high school graduates in the Pacific Northwest who were surveyed about their high school experiences. Rather than belabor the issues of at-risk youth, dropout rates, and the failure of schools to adequately address Indian students' needs, this study looks at how schools have helped Indian…