The instructional theory presented in this document provides an explanation and context for making instructional decisions. The theory's purpose is to facilitate continual inquiry in the real world of teaching; to facilitate the decision making role of teachers and researchers; and to enable teachers and scholars more clearly to describe and…

Project RETAIN (Retention in Education Technical Assistance and Information Network) is a Florida project that assists school districts through identification and dissemination of effective practices that keep students with mild disabilities in school. One part of the project was the development of a database of school district efforts in the area…

There is widespread agreement that theories of teaching, learning, and assessment should be consistent with a certain theory of learning, whether it be constructivism or some other theory. This paper describes the creation and development of the working draft of the assessment standards for school mathematics published by the National Council of…

Mentoring programs depend on a complex personal and professional relationship between a novice teacher and a veteran teacher. The study described here was designed to add to the knowledge of mentor roles, benefits of mentoring, and obstacles to mentoring. This report is based on the first of two meetings with a diverse group of mentor teachers…

This document presents an overview of 32 research projects addressing issues related to vocational education and the transition from school to work, completed in the Netherlands during 1989-1990. For each research project, the following information is provided: research title, project number, the number of a previous or follow-up project where…

The New Zealand Correspondence School is a large, state-funded, national institution teaching at preschool and elementary-secondary school levels. Like the regular education system, it long has been tightly controlled, with a national syllabus, national grading and examinations, and national guidelines for interpretation of the syllabus. The…

This paper examines strategies to enhance learning, based on innovations in technology. It represents an evolution of thought from the ancient masters, great thinking, and the Great Learning all the way to the present. A syllabus for the future is constructed, using a model of communication, the Rhetorical Systems Model. The model is based on a…

This paper asserts that in the United States, states and large school districts are turning to a relatively new policy strategy, know as "reconstitution," for addressing the conditions of low-performing schools. The strategy centers around the notion of vacating the adults from a school building and starting over. The underlying question…

Having taught for nearly 30 years in Britain's first Rudolf Steiner school, Francis Edmunds founded Emerson College, an adult education and teacher training center where he was active until his death in 1989. This book contains a collection of Edmunds' writings on Steiner education mostly excerpted from "Child and Man,""The Michael…

Research suggests that children benefit from preschool programs only when the programs are of high quality. This study sought to ascertain if Texas public prekindergarten teachers and administrators recognized standards for high quality preschool consistent with nationally recognized standards, and to determine if their level of acceptance was…

This paper presents a rubric developed as a continuum for assessing elementary students' science process knowledge. The continuum was designed to capture the growth of an individual student's knowledge of processes that are essential to learning science. The assessment tool is meant to document changes in science processes that are incremental and…

This report reviews research on the effects of between- and within-class ability grouping on the achievement of elementary school students. The review technique, known as "best-evidence synthesis," combines features of meta-analytic and narrative reviews. Overall, evidence does not support assignment of students to self-contained classes…

Statistics are presented indicating that, between 1988 and 1991 in England, there was a 2.05% increase in segregation of children with disabilities aged between 5 and 10 years. Over the same period, there was a 2.12% decrease in segregation of children aged 11 to 15. The statistics also indicate that children's chances of being integrated into…

Educational managers, policymakers, and scholars should make a courageous effort to face fundamental school system policymaking dilemmas in new ways. Self-empowering strategies are the levers that uncover, clarify, and solve problems. This paper argues that qualitative research, as a self-empowering problem solving strategy, will enable educators…

This study determined the criteria used by administrators to assess effective teaching by early childhood public school teachers and explored the relationship between such evaluative criteria and research- and theory-based indicators of developmentally appropriate practices. Instruments used for evaluation were collected from 17 school districts…