These materials include a report, evaluation, and book written about a workplace literacy project involving education (Alpena Community College), business and industry (Besser Company and Alpena Power Company), and labor (Thunder Bay Labor Council). The report specifies objectives; accomplishments, including development of eight courses in math,…

This chapter describes the nature of bilingual education for Hispanics of Mexican origin (Chicanos), outlines successful and unsuccessful classroom approaches to bilingual education, and proposes a research agenda for the future. Four principal approaches have been used in observational studies of language use in bilingual classrooms, including…

This report documents how the Business/Training Institute of Northwest Iowa Community College and Coilcraft, Inc., of Hawarden, Iowa, worked as partners to establish a basic workplace skills program for Coilcraft's workers. The project goals were to develop and offer a workplace literacy program that would enroll 160 workers and prepare them to…

Ireland's program of specific skills training (SST) Objective 1 courses, which are designed to train/retrain the labor force required for implementation of Ireland's Industry and Services Operational Programme, was evaluated by analyzing program expenditure reports and participant profiles, surveying a random sample of 101 employers, and visiting…

In 1993-94, a random sample of 547 individuals authorized to perform marriages in Australia (marriage celebrants) and 560 couples from across Australia who had married in 1993 were surveyed regarding their views of premarriage education (PME) and the factors enhancing/inhibiting participation in PME programs (PMEPs). Of the marriage celebrants,…

Concerns over the high incidence of divorce and domestic violence have prompted many Australian churches and some nonchurch agencies to offer premarriage education programs (PMEPs) to couples planning to marry. Unlike past PMEPs, which were often didactic, Australia's present-day PMEPs tend to be learner-centered programs that encourage…

In an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of its dental hygiene program, William Rainey Harper College (WRHC), in Illinois, conducted a follow-up study of program graduates from 1994. Surveys were mailed to all 30 1994 dental hygiene associate degree graduates, receiving responses from 77% (n=23). Study findings included the following: (1) all…

A study examined the labor market problems of the United States' out-of-school youth population and trends in the development and attempted solution of those problems over the past 20 years. The study's major areas of focus were as follows: trends in the nation's out-of-school youth population's size and demographic composition; trends in the…

This report describes a 3-week, six-credit, graduate-level summer course on teaching gifted and talented students, which was designed to change beliefs about giftedness and improve practice. Interviews with the 50 course participants (teachers, administrators, and resource persons) were conducted after course completion to determine their views…

This paper reports initial results from an evaluation of the first 2 years of implementation of a Master's level teacher preparation program at Wheelock College (Massachusetts) for teachers of students with special needs (TSSN). An overview of the program notes that the intensive 14-month experience leads to a Master's degree in education and…

The College Discovery Prefreshman Summer Program (CDPSP) at New York's Bronx Community College is a 6-week summer bridge program providing minority and low-income students with career counseling, study skills, and intensive instruction in English, reading, and mathematics. To determine the effects of the program on participants' academic,…

Even Start is a family-centered national literacy program whose goal is to break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by expanding the educational opportunities available to low-income families with limited educational experiences. To reach this goal, all Even Start projects provide services in each of three core areas: adult education, parenting…

A recent National Research Council study, "Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda" examined the status of bilingual education research and the direction of future studies. The report is discussed here, in a format corresponding to the report's sections on domains of research and practice: bilingualism and…

The first-year evaluation of a two-way Spanish/English bilingual education program at two Austin (Texas) elementary schools is presented. The developmental program has as its objectives the development of students' oral proficiency in Spanish and English, development of grade-level appropriate literacy in both languages, increase in academic…

The objectives of this study were identification and verification of key processes that could be used by higher education quality administrators to implement continuous improvement programs and benchmarking processes. East Tennessee State University's Continuous Improvement Key Process Relationship Matrix was used as the basis of a 44-item…