School leadership in New Zealand has gained more attention in recent years. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) began collecting data on all principal advertisements in the "Education Gazette" in late 2007. This brief report analyses principal vacancies advertised in the "Education Gazette" in 2009 and…

This study aims at investigating the use of critical thinking in high school social science textbooks based on Fars Province teachers' attitudes in order to present a model for textbook development. To achieve this goal, the use of the following skills in the social science textbooks was analyzed: reasoning, questioning, assessment of examples and…

Community colleges are facing tough challenges, and engaging faculty members--both full-time and adjunct--in the hard work of meeting these challenges is critical. Colleges can reap major benefits from meaningful engagement with faculty, yet many institutions find it difficult to do. In partnership with Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges…

The "Collegiate Football Sustainable Materials Management Toolkit" was researched by student interns in the Virginia Tech Office of Energy & Sustainability, developed in collaboration with the US EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) and a national panel of technical experts from universities across the nation, and driven forward…

The purpose of this study was to identify the competencies important for success in entry-level residence life positions. The literature suggests that student affairs professionals must ascertain which skills require further development in order to identify professional development activities that will increase proficiency and improve overall…

In recognition of the status of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai as a platform for exchange of ideas and experience in lifelong learning, UNESCO, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, the Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy and the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO joined forces to co-organise the Shanghai International…

Today's students grow up in a technological milieu of hand-held computers with high storage capacities, internet access, and the ability to shoot high definition photographs and video. As such, they are empowered to construct representations of the past virtually "on the run." In this article, the authors investigated the historical "and"…

This essay presents a model of reflective use of writing technologies, one that provides a means of more fully exploiting the possibilities of these tools for transforming writing activity. Derived from the work of computer designer Douglas Engelbart, the "bootstrapping" model of reflective use extends current arguments in the field…

Parenting is a recurring topic in books, newspapers, magazines and TV shows in Western societies. Often it involves experts giving advice to adults. Hence, parenting is made visible, categorised, evaluated and corrected in public. Judgements on what is desirable are demonstrated, and objectives to be achieved are pointed out. In the present study,…

Making sure that any reforms enjoy social support is an urgent problem in societal transformations. This truth has been hard won by history and has rightly taken on the status of an axiom. What makes reforms different from revolutions is that they are limited when it comes to the use of the mechanisms of destruction and suppression. In contrast to…

Consultation offers a cost-effective option that can develop into a satisfying, collaborative relationship that is highly productive, given the right ingredients: content and process knowledge on the part of the consultant, a systemic approach to change, and a foundation of professional and ethical standards on which to build a trustworthy…

People are generally skilled at using a confidence scale to rate the strength of their memories over a wide range. Specifically, low-confidence recognition decisions are often associated with close-to-chance accuracy, whereas high-confidence recognition decisions can be associated with close-to-perfect accuracy. However, using a 20-point rating…

Mental models are basic cognitive constructs that are central for understanding phenomena of the world and predicting future events. Our comparison of two analysis approaches, SMD and QFCA, for measuring externalized mental models reveals different levels of abstraction and different perspectives. The advantages of the SMD include possibilities…

This study investigated whether East Asians differ from Caucasian Canadians in their expectations about counselling. Participants in this study included 31 East Asian and 53 Caucasian Canadian university students. The East Asian participants were all first-generation East Asians living in Canada, originally from China, Korea, Japan, or Vietnam.…

Through the process of initiating, implementing, and sustaining a schoolwide professional learning community (PLC), teachers and administrators at the pseudonymous Silver Valley Middle School provide a powerful example of distributed leadership in action. New leadership roles, coordination, and interdependency among staff have led to an increased…