Professional development (PD) for early childhood educators has received increased attention as a means of bolstering young children's learning and development. Theory and research indicate that educators' characteristics play roles in both their own learning and that of children; however, little research has explored who participates in PD. This…

Although considerable evidence confirms that a director with good leadership and administrative skills is vital for developing and sustaining a high quality child care program, many directors assume the role with little management experience or training. This paper reports on a training program in Canada that combined a formal curriculum to…

Eight school districts in Rhode Island formed the East Bay Professional Learning Community to launch a joint effort to develop a culture of assessment literacy through ongoing professional learning focused on team-specific action plans tightly aligned to school, district, and state initiatives. To accomplish this, the districts pooled their…

Instructional Rounds is a continuous improvement strategy that focuses on the technical core of educational systems as well as educators collaborating side-by-side. Concentrating on collective learning, this process only makes sense within an overall strategy of improvement. This case study examined the Instructional Rounds process in a northern…

By investigating the factors facilitating and hindering a small scale educational change, this study highlights the crucial role of leadership in designing and implementing an educational change at a transnational university in Vietnam. During its initiation stage, the programme leaders seemed to fail to (1) set up a clear schedule for changing,…

In-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 homeowners selected by 6 state homeownership programs as representing good examples of homeownership by individuals with developmental disabilities. Recurring themes were found in the choice of a home, advantages and disadvantages of homeownership, handling problems, community…

Functional analysis methodology has become the hallmark of behavioral assessment, yielding a determination of behavioral function in roughly 96% of the cases published (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). Some authors have suggested that incorporating the results of a descriptive assessment into the design of a functional analysis may be useful in…

This article is dedicated to an in-depth discussion of the theme community and the implications the multiple meanings of community hold for the field of qualitative research. This theme surfaced from Walderns 2003 study entitled Resistance to Research in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside, which dealt with participant resistance to joining research…

This is the first of three volumes that constitute the final evaluation report of Project STAR (State Technical Assistance Resources), an undertaking of the Maryland State Department of Education designed to help 36 elementary schools improve their reading programs. This volume is essentially descriptive and is divided into seven parts. The first…

In fall 1993, the Master Plan Committee was established at the City College of San Francisco to develop priorities for the college. The committee developed a comprehensive long-range master plan for the 1994-99 period, proposing 25 planning goals and 112 institutional objectives. This report provides results from an assessment of progress made…

This report, the 10th in a series of the National Governor's Association (NGA) project "Facilitating Improvement of State Programs for Pregnant Women and Children," describes ongoing efforts of facilitating development of provider participation in Medicaid. The objective of the project is to identify where participation problems result…

The latest round of proposed state and federal welfare reforms has major implications for state work force development systems. These systems will face new demands generated by the need to help welfare recipients find jobs before they reach the time limits on aid and the need for states to meet the new work participation rates for federal welfare…

This guidebook was developed for schools to use to improve their current career planning efforts by placing career planning in the context of a comprehensive guidance program. The guidebook defines activities that make up life planning and provides the framework for students to conduct self-reviews using these career planning principles. The…

Since the inaugural meeting of the Southeastern Association of Community College Research in 1975, the research conducted at community colleges, as well as the issues facing researchers, have remained fairly constant. Research has been consistently understaffed and the themes of research have tended to focus on relating student progress to…

This collection of six articles describes essential features of systemic program evaluation. Articles are: (1) "Programs Need to Go Beyond 'Comprehensive'" (R. Jerry Adams and Kim Yap); (2) "Systematic Planning of Goals for Desired Outcomes" (Steve Nelson); (3) "A Framework for Conducting Systematic Evaluation" (Dean Arrasmith); (4) "Developing…