This guidebook describes the components involved in proactively developing a comprehensive crisis-management plan. Chapter 1 explains the philosophical underpinnings of a crisis-management plan and discusses the importance of vision and staff development. Chapter 2 answers the questions: Why do we need a crisis-management plan? Who needs to be…

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a 40-month federally supported program at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Plattsburgh to create models for increasing the persistence rate to the baccalaureate of students who transfer from two-year colleges to four-year schools. These models were created by a transfer…

This book offers an overview of the cooperative learning process, including its rationale, research base, value, and practical considerations, with an emphasis on two key characteristics: cooperative learning's ability to create communities within classrooms, and well-structured, sequenced assignments which allow students to internalize…

This study reports on the improvement of a teacher researcher's teaching practice by adopting a constructivist teaching approach. Four biology units on the nervous system, human circulatory system, evolution, and vertebrate classification were selected to illustrate a model of biology teaching. Data were drawn from student responses to…

This book focuses on teacher behavior and explores the concept of noncoercive classroom management. It is a companion to a previous book, "A Multiple Intelligences Road to a Quality Classroom." The book describes what teachers can do to eliminate fear and coercion, model learning tasks, honor all ways of being intelligent, collect…

A project was conducted in Philadelphia to help adult students obtain a high school diploma as an alternative to or enhancement of a General Educational Development (GED) certificate. During fiscal year 1996-97 the Metropolitan Career Center (MCC), in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia, designed an Alternative Diploma Program…

This study examined the variety of service delivery models used to provide services to preschool children with disabilities in nine diverse communities across three states (Colorado, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania). Information was derived primarily from interviews conducted with community preschool program administrators, service providers, and…

The conception of mathematics anxiety held by a teacher may have a great deal to do with the way in which mathematics is characterized in classroom teaching. The purpose of this study is to determine if fourth-grade students' mathematics anxiety can be decreased by a change in implementing new instructional strategies. The study employed a…

This book is a learner's manual for a course on how to develop empowered teams for higher education management, how to function effectively as a team member, and how to objectively evaluate one's impact on the team. Taking a hands-on approach to learning about quality, the course introduces quality principles, asks students to apply these in a…

To identify specific instructional features prompting meaningful change among teacher candidates, this literature review evaluated studies that examined the influence of teacher education coursework on preservice teachers' conceptions and practices. Literature came from books and from journals published between 1992-96. The review examined whether…

Based on collaborative learning theories, this qualitative study describes seven adult students' experiences of learning in a context of synchronous computer-mediated communication within a distance education environment. The setting was an 8-week, Internet-based undergraduate/graduate sociology course sponsored by Indiana University Purdue…

This chapter describes a program evaluation of cooperative learning in a private language school devoted to teaching English to Japanese students. Student resistance to cooperative learning was due to a lack of training of students, a lack of understanding of basic cooperative learning principles by administrators, and a lack of cooperative…

This paper describes a first-year English-as-foreign-language junior college reading course in Japan that utilized a combination of whole class instruction and cooperative learning techniques to encourage group discussion and language skill development. Students were randomly divided into groups of eight--a group which became the students' home…

Despite several years of English language instruction, most Japanese students remain unable to produce nor comprehend more than rudimentary English. In order to overcome this problem, students must be motivated to participate in tasks designed to get them to use English communicatively--a difficult task in a country where students typically remain…

This study examined how support tools (i.e., prompts that support students to use self-explanation and self-monitoring strategies) facilitate convergent knowledge building processes in a World Wide Web-based virtual university engineering course. A quasi-experimental study was designed. An engineering class of a virtual university was selected as…