First-year programs and freshman learning communities (FLCs) have become an institutionalized feature of the higher-education landscape. Although a vast amount of literature asserts the positive consequences of these programs, less attention has been devoted to the unintended, and occasionally negative, consequences of FLCs. The author identifies…

This paper examines the relation between computer use in diverse learning contexts and math achievement, and the gender and ethnicity-based differences in that relation. The study selected learner centeredness as a meaningful pedagogy in using computers because of its importance in technology-based learning. Along with the emerging notion of the…

Schools are professional work groups requiring the application of professional knowledge to constantly shifting educational challenges as adults work to help students learn. This paper describes a theory of professional visualization through which principals can make their professional practice consistent with their knowledge, values, and…

Principal-preparation programs require students to take research courses; however, principals are often unprepared to apply research skills in school settings. This paper discusses approaches to using data for decision making in a site-managed school. It describes one high school's efforts to apply research and recommends that…

Designed to be a resource to help educational practitioners, researchers, and other interested persons in the national and international community to understand terms used in contemporary and historical writings about literacy, this dictionary provides authenticated definitions of the technical terminology of the nature, study, and practice of…

The Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families is a forum in which persons involved in the current generation of community-based cross-systems can engage in discussion about their work. Roundtable members, now numbering 30, meet biannually to share lessons they are learning and to work on common problems they face.…

Responding to a perceived need resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War, the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) at Maxwell Air Force Base (Alabama) revised its curriculum. Data for the descriptive study were gathered through interviews of the leadership of the school and…

Introducing teacher education students to the use of information technologies for literacy instruction, this book presents a series of conceptual frameworks for thinking about how technology can support instruction--frameworks that will help teachers effectively integrate technology into their own teaching. The book also relates different ways of…

The "Teachers as Researchers in the Context of Award Bearing Courses and Research Degrees" is a United Kingdom project that explores the claims made for action research and the criticisms levelled against it. This paper offers a set of "readings" of six action research projects. After Part 1, which serves as an introduction,…

A research project evaluated the contribution of biological, behavioral, and social sciences to nursing and midwifery education programs in Britain. The study of scientific knowledge relevant to recently qualified nurses and midwives was confined to six topics: fluids, electrolytes, and renal systems; nutrition; acute pain; shock; stress; and…

This article reports that curriculum experts see some slow but significant shifts in thinking regarding the role of literature in the K-12 curriculum. The article first discusses changes in elementary classrooms, such as the use of "real" literature in the form of trade books. Also considered is the call for new basal readers or content…

This paper describes the dilemmas of leadership experienced by principals and superintendents in Norway. The term "dilemma" refers to contradictory orientations that these educational leaders experienced in their job activities. Dilemmas are categorized in terms of legality, which pertains to the formal steering of the schools, or in…

Epistemic thought is a process that focuses on the origin of human knowledge. This paper describes inquiry-based leadership, a viewpoint that integrates epistemic thought with the realities of school administration. The paper examines the art of teacher inquiry and its link to Inquiry-Based Leadership (IBL), and presents a school-university…

This paper takes the position that philosophy is a critical avenue with which to approach a study of schooling, and that study of philosophy and philosophy of education will provide a framework needed for inquiry into schooling that is foundational, diverse, and critical. Processes of philosophical inquiry include the following: (1) conceptual…

Graduate schools have responded to the problem of graduate student attrition by placing greater emphasis on selection, assuming that better, more informed admission decisions would result in declining attrition. Yet the problem persists, and the question arises as to whether attrition is due to individual characteristics of graduate students or to…