Incorporates the expectancy theory of motivation in the analysis of teaching improvement in three areas of faculty interest: (1) importance of tenure criteria; (2) expected outcomes from participating in improvement activities; and (3) interest in different instructional-improvement practices. Indicates that most faculty consider research more…

States that today's Greek-letter organizations are under greater scrutiny than ever before and although these groups can contribute to the educational success of their members in important ways, they will not achieve that potential without addressing persistent challenges. Describes the historical background as well as the role of today's Greek…

Examines how early childhood teachers in one Australian state use child observations. Argues that the current economic/political climate has produced changes for early childhood settings and that how teachers respond to changes regarding child observation depends on their work context. Suggests that the purpose of observation is changing and that…

Presents advice on turning camp staff into a team with the power to give campers a good experience. Suggests reviewing expectations of staff, obtaining commitment to those expectations, treating staff with respect, teaming old and new staff members, creating a mission statement, and empowering staff through communication. Includes a sample mission…

Surveyed 319 Welsh secondary students from rural, urban-suburban, and inner city schools to determine their beliefs and attitudes about silence in the classroom. Results indicated that students believed they were more silent than their teachers and felt they were more silent when learning than their teachers were when teaching. Suburban students…

Investigated the effectiveness of a school-wide discipline model designed to improve classroom behavior while reducing the extent to which all students, especially those with emotional and behavioral problems, were involved in disciplinary actions. Treatment fidelity data provided support for the integrity of teachers' use of the program. Numbers…

Technology supplements to college textbooks, such as self-guided quizzes and exercises available over the Internet, have become commonplace. The current study examined student perceptions regarding the utility of technology supplements that accompanied a public speaking fundamentals textbook. At semester's end, students reported the supplements to…

Ineffective approaches for teaching with print may prevent textbook reading from being a useful learning resource in middle school. University faculty mentored a middle school science teacher as he implemented a textbook study-reading approach, PLAN (Caverly, Mandeville & Nicholson, 1995), in 2 classes (n=33). PLAN orchestrates 4 strategies…

The Coleman report, published 12 years after the Brown decision, confirmed that widespread school segregation in the United States created inequality of educational opportunity. This study examines whether racial and socioeconomic segregation, which is on the rise in the United States, is still contributing to the achievement differences among…

Every educator has a handful of students who perpetually push his or her buttons. The challenge of creating a strong, nurturing classroom community is especially difficult if you are an urban school teacher. Not because children in an urban area are inherently more wild or difficult to teach. Rather, there is a mythology about how to best…

Library Media Specialist and outside consultants provided several reading workshops for faculty and the reading program at Farmington High School, the school being fortunate among a limited number of schools that provide a true reading time for its students. The faculty has begun to assign books and their expectation for students to read is…

Student learning portfolios have become increasingly popular in educational administration preparation programs due to their many uses and range of applications. Here, Norton documents the nature and extent of its usage nationwide. (Contains 7 tables.)

A theoretically informed model was estimated with the LISREL-VIII program using panel data from 1,384 mother-adolescent child pairs to examine processes by which mothers' adolescent school experiences measured in 1971 (Time 1) affected the adolescent school experiences of their children measured in the 1990s (Time 3) through mediating variables…

This study examined how one type of student work habit classroom participation is related to a combination of both student factors (math achievement, personal achievement goals, perceptions of classroom goal structures, and teacher support) and features of the classroom context (teachers' instructional practices, average perceptions of classroom…

Teaching at-risk students can be one of the "most stressful, complex and difficult challenges facing public education today and perhaps one of our greatest failures." What further complicates this challenge is that there is no commonly accepted definition of the term at risk, and it is difficult to determine which students this label should…