In this paper, a statement of concern about short-term thinking by child care professionals is followed by a discussion of long-term planning for the future of day care. It is argued that day care policy should be made by those who best understand the strengths and weaknesses of the profession: providers and parents. Providers and parents should…

Schools throughout Australia both teach about computers and use computers as a medium for teaching at all levels of the educational system, but teachers use the computer to support existing pedagogic practice rather than looking to the computer as an agent of curriculum change. Drawing in a descriptive way upon a number of recent studies and…

This document reports on a conference that disseminated to Norwegian parents and educators the findings of the Council of Europe's Council for Cultural Cooperation's Project No. 8, "Innovation in Primary Education." The main address was given by Professor Maurice Galton of the School of Education, University of Leicester, United Kingdom,…

A description is given of the Gifted Studies Network, established to meet the needs of teachers of the gifted. The purpose of the program is to work with local school districts and local educational agencies in the development and implementation of alternative methods of educating the gifted learner, using programs ordinarily not offered in the…

This report examines a variety of ways that the QUILL program for teaching writing was realized in elementary classrooms. In particular, the report looks at the different ways purposeful writing was achieved using MAILBAG, the electronic mail component of QUILL. The analysis shows that innovations in education should be viewed as objects created…

The new media--including videodisks, microcomputers, and communication networks--are now becoming widely accepted in the world of education. It is predicted that as a result there will be many rapid changes in school education, both in content and in methods. In order to analyze rates, degree, and methods of utilizing the new media, the NHK Radio…

The articles in this booklet offering innovative ideas for school improvement were selected from Prototype pieces published in the Phi Delta Kappan since the fall of 1981. Each of the projects has been successfully implemented in a school and is currently in operation. The first section, "Keeping Kids in School" presents programs involving parents…

The Elementary Certification Program at Duke University, the first program to be approved under North Carolina's innovative alternative certification route, is a small but significant step toward the improvement of teacher education. This innovative program offers prospective early childhood teachers with liberal arts backgrounds an intensive…

A strategy for revitalizing public education by stimulating the creation of new public schools is proposed in this report. The proposed system goes beyond school choice and is based on the withdrawal of local districts' exclusive franchise to own and operate public schools. The proposal is based on the premise that the state must provide both…

If one were to list the more important developments in South African education during the past 4 or 5 decades, the changed attitude toward preschool education would surely rank high on the list. People involved in preschool education have discovered the need to apply recently formulated sociological and psychological theories to preschool…

A study examined the volume and quality of distance training in Italy, the bodies most directly interested, and problems and trends. Two factors were singled out that not only led to greater interest in distance training between 1970 and 1980 but also to the first experiments being carried out--the economic crisis and the modernization process.…

All 24 of Maryland's county school systems participated in a voluntary school improvement program that involved the adoption and implementation of one or more of four research-based, instructional processes: Active Teaching, Mastery Learning, Student Team Learning, and Teaching Variables. A 5-year study of this program produced findings on a…

Principals and teachers involved in implementing benchmark testing in a large, urban, midwestern school district progressed from lower to higher stages of concern during the 4 years of a longitudinal study. A random sample of the teachers and all the principals in the district's 49 elementary, 9 junior high, and 10 high schools completed the…

A report is given on findings of research studies on how teachers respond to attempts to implement educational innovations. In many cases, teachers believe their future in relation to the innovation is determined not by them, but by some superordinate. Other teacher responses may be the conviction that the change will soon fade away as other fads…

Selected reasons for resistance to change in education are discussed, the kinds of resulting behaviors are noted, and suggestions for plausible means of overcoming this resistance are offered. Though the search for excellence and innovation in education are desirable, they are often not sustained for any appreciable period of time and the…