The economic meltdown has hit U.S. college campuses, and higher education is on the chopping block in state budgets, with cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars already approved and hundreds of millions in more cuts on the way. As veteran legislators, the authors have seen this story play out before in previous recessions. The mindset on…

School heads and assistant headteachers in Cyprus attend in-service training programmes as part of their professional development, after they are promoted to their new leadership post. A review of the literature highlights the significance of a needs analysis when designing and/or reforming in-service training programmes. Nevertheless, there seems…

This article reports findings from an international study about dilemmas of difference in relation to special educational needs and disability in education. It was part of a larger study of the perspectives of 132 education practitioners and policy makers in England, the USA and the Netherlands to a range of dilemmas of difference. It also…

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) made significant changes in the roles of general and special educators, especially related to inclusion and collaboration. This pilot study examined the perceptions of beginning elementary and secondary school special and general education teachers in a midwestern state in the…

Response to Intervention (RtI) is sweeping the country, changing the way children's educational needs are recognized and met. RtI was introduced through special education legislation as part of IDEA 2004 and offered an alternative approach for identifying students with learning disabilities (Bender & Shores, 2007). RtI is designed to bring…

This article reports on aspects of a small-scale study conducted in the south of England that explored the learning experiences of three four-year-old children with identified special educational needs, who attended a combination of early education settings--one "more special" and one "more inclusive" (Nind et al., 2007). The…

This survey study explored high school science teachers' challenges and needs specific to their growing English language learning (ELL) student population. Thirty-three science teachers from 6 English as a Second language (ESL)-center high schools in central Virginia participated in the survey. Issues surveyed were (a) strategies used by science…

Background: Contraception is widely prescribed to women with intellectual disabilities, yet little is known about what the women think and feel about this. One of the aims of the study was to explore what women understood and to what extent they were able to exercise choice and control. Method: Twenty-three women with mild and moderate…

Life for uneducated women involves contending with myriad barriers to economic self-sufficiency. The average income for individuals without at least a high school diploma or GED is about $18,734. That income level falls close to the poverty line established by the federal government for a family of three or more. Further compounding the problem…

Background: Giving young people more and better opportunities to have their voices heard is a key feature of current educational policy and research internationally and in the UK. Aims: To examine the views of young people with a history of specific language impairment (SLI) as they entered post-16 education. Methods & Procedures: A total of…

This paper focuses on the socially constructed ideas that have come to be given the status of taken-for-granted knowledge within not one, but two, fields of professional practice in Northern Irish schools; community relations and special needs education. Dominant discourses were viewed as constructing norms around which educational professionals…

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, close to 1.8 million people, or 77% of all computer professionals, were working in the design, development, deployment, maintenance, and management of software in 2006. The ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] model curriculum for the BS in computer science proposes that about 42% of the core body…

Previous efforts at leveling the learning field for all students have not met with success. In 1955 Johnny allegedly could not read because of the "look-and-say method" of teaching reading; 26 years later he still could not read because most elementary schools continued to use the aforementioned unproductive system. Perhaps now is…

Issues arising from an ageing society, a low fertility rate and growing need for a skilled work force have seen increased government commitment to improving the participation rate of mature-aged workers. Education and training are seen as a principal strategy to increase the employability of these workers, yet participation in training is low and…

In 2004, the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) secured funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to infuse engineering design into the schools through technology education. In order to reach this goal the researchers, in cooperation with NCETE, conducted a two phase study to identify outcomes for high-school…