National education policy reforms often do not translate into changes at the classroom level. This paper presents a conceptual framework developed for Sub-Saharan Africa to assist policy-makers in bridging the gap between school practice and national policies. It also describes how the framework was applied to current school-improvement efforts in…

This paper provides a cross-program view of the results of three successful school improvement programs that regional educational laboratories developed and implemented. The programs and their developers are: (1) A+chieving Excellence from the Mid-Continental Regional Educational Laboratory; (2) Onward to Excellence (OTE) from the Northwest…

Currently, the relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language learning (FLL) is unidirectional, with theory and hypotheses flowing from SLA to FLL, and making FLL a subset of SLA. However, this relationship is an artificial one resting on debatable or even incorrect assumptions. These include the assumptions that: (1)…

Promising instructional development perspectives are synthesized into a set of perspectives that might be discussed by the instructional technology profession to set some new directions for the field. An integrated set of criteria, "Configurational Inquiry Instructional Development Perspective" (CIIDP), is proposed. Configurational…

Information about good practice in classroom teaching is needed to inform educational planners and practitioners of the development and improvement of curricula and teaching and as a resource for further curriculum reform. This paper, part of a study on teacher effectiveness, reports on classroom research in a Malaysian secondary school 4 years…

Beginning in the mid-1960s, thousands of small alternative schools sprang up across the United States and Canada. These schools varied widely in programs and policies, but common factors among them were a disenchantment with conventional schooling, a desire to reform education, and (frequently) the belief that schools should be controlled by the…

This case study describes a preservice program for prospective high school science teachers at Monash University in Victoria, Australia. The program views student teaching as only the first stage of career-long professional development, promotes the notion of the reflective practitioner, maximizes student teachers' contacts with school pupils and…

In the master's program in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course at the American University of Cairo (Egypt), student projects linking theory with classroom practice are used as a teacher training technique. The projects allow trainees to synthesize theoretical concepts, learn processes and develop materials they can use in…

This paper describes the intelligent advisor system, named CODAMA, used in teaching a university-level systems analysis and design course. The paper discusses: (1) the use of CODAMA to assist students to transfer theoretical knowledge to the practical; (2) details of how CODAMA is applied in conjunction with a computer-aided software engineering…

An overview is provided of the relevant concepts from Total Quality Management (TQM), fuzzy logic, and the chaos theory of education in an effort to support the case for student success courses. First, the paper discusses student success courses, which emphasize helping students develop the skills needed to identify, create, and pursue an…

A study reviewed the effects of the whole language movement. Two forms of analysis were used: meta-analysis, and a simple "vote-counting" procedure. Quantitative studies that compared a whole language and a traditional (or basal reading) approach, published between 1988 and 1993, were selected for analysis. A total of 45 studies were…

From 1988 through 1995 a group of researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education collaborated with teachers from nearby schools on research to address questions about teaching for understanding and linking research with practice. They describe the theoretical foundations underlying the Teaching for Understanding framework, the process and…

A project was conducted to examine the impact of vocational education and training (VET) research on decision making in VET in Australia. Data were collected from the following: a literature review; a symposium attended by state-, territory-, and national-level VET policymakers and planners and VET providers; semistructured telephone interviews…

This digest addresses principles of planning science programs for high ability learners. It notes various evaluation reports that have reviewed needs in science learning and teaching, identified essential science concepts and processes, and evaluated teacher enhancement programs and curricula. Research on gifted learners in science is briefly…

This book discusses how second language acquisition (SLA) research can illuminate language pedagogy, and suggests four main roles for the SLA researcher: developing relevant theories; conducting classroom research; making research accessible to teachers; and facilitating action research. The first chapter outlines a number of different…