Exposure to the Reggio Emilia approach has led to greater awareness among early childhood educators of the importance of the arts, project work, and documentation. To be successful in integrating visual arts, teachers need to acquire the knowledge and skills for working with the arts and experience a wide range of art materials, methods, and…

The Information Environment for School Leadership Preparation (IESLP) is a Web-based instructional system for educational administration preparation programs. The Web site presents a virtual rural school environment: a database of an actual rural school (using pseudonyms) containing information about students, teachers, school board members, test…

This study assesses the current capacity of Massachusetts' institutions of higher education (IHE) to prepare the early education and care (EEC) workforce, as well as the current state of progress on the elements identified in the Report of the Early Education and Care Advisory Committee as critical to advancing a professional development system.…

Many social processes are needed before a child is ready to speak, but many educational and therapeutic approaches to preverbal children do not address the social skills that are prerequisite to effective communication. This curriculum manual contains activities for educating parents and professional to help children develop the social skills…

While natural resource professionals are adept at managing resources, they often lack the skills and desire to work effectively with the public. School-based partnerships are a potential vehicle for enhancing social interaction skills. Research shows that teachers benefit from partnerships but the benefits of partnering for the resource…

The Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) in Texas attempts to improve schooling for students in at-risk situations. Rather than lowering expectations for these learners, the ASP attempts to accelerate progress by maximizing their talent development. The accelerated schools movement in Texas spread rapidly, but few actual data have been collected…

This report presents information across states on a number of education indicators. It offers state profile information about students and their achievement, teachers, and standards for student learning. It also includes special data about the education of children in poverty and the assistance they receive toward achieving state standards through…

A panel of state staff, Professional Development Center directors, and other experts reviewed current or previous exemplary projects in Pennsylvania and in the U.S. and published project descriptions in a newsletter ("FOCUS" bulletin). Twenty-two special projects were selected as exemplary based on a five-point scale for innovation,…

This practicum was designed to increase middle-level teaching teams' understanding of cognitively guided instructional strategies or brain-based learning theories and to promote the incorporation of these strategies into the teaching of cross-curriculum thematic units. Twelve staff development modules based on a new perspective of learning which…

In compliance with Texas state law, the Austin Independent School District (AISD) provides two programs to serve students identified as limited English proficient (LEP): Bilingual Education (BE) with dual language instruction and English as Second Language (ESL) intensive English instruction. ESL is both a component of BE and a stand-alone…

According to this book, the world of work is changing to a future in which the 40-hour work week is obsolete. Many corporations are reducing core staff but are slow to grapple with the associated problems, such as how to motivate employees who will be retiring in a few years and how to make use of ex-employees on a consultancy basis. The book…

This document aims to help teachers make the transition to standards-based teaching and learning. It describes the first phase of a 3-year applied research project on professional development for teaching to high standards in culturally and linguistically diverse middle schools. Standards-based teaching and learning requires teachers to reach a…

For decades there has been no formal evaluation system to ensure the quality of art teaching in Hong Kong. Additionally, although the syllabi for art are open and flexible, art teachers do not have adequate knowledge to develop a balanced curriculum. This study investigates what constitutes good art teaching and the extent to which art teachers…

Educators today are under tremendous pressure to make use of the latest in technology while continuing to provide quality educational experiences for students. Quality staff development is essential and costly, especially in rural areas. This study looked at the use of mentoring as a positive strategy for building teacher confidence in technology…

This paper describes the design of a Web-based learning environment for leadership facilitators in a United States military organization. The overall aim of this project was to design a prototype of an online learning environment that supports leadership facilitators' knowledge development in the content area of motivation. The learning…