Partnering with a community organization for service-learning is a meaningful approach to higher education curriculum. Service-learning is a pedagogy centered on service, combining structured opportunities that link the course content to critical self-reflection for the acquisition of values and skills that lead to enhanced citizenry in addition…

During the last 20 years, youth programming has shifted from risk reduction to youth development. While numerous instruments exist to measure selected individual characteristics/competencies among youth, a comprehensive instrument to measure four constructs of personal and social skills could not be identified. The purpose of this study was to…

On paper, CONFINTEA VI, the United Nations world conference on adult education that took place in Brazil in December, was just as important as the climate change conference in Copenhagen that took place the following week. As a UN conference it attracted delegations from 162 countries, many headed up by ministers. In total, about 2,000 people…

In the fourth series of Baltimore-set drama series "The Wire," a former policeman turned teacher realises that he can only promote the learning of disaffected kids by engaging them, using their own experience as a trigger. The power of this idea made the author realised that as an adult tutor, the closer one gets to what interests the…

This is a commentary on the article by E. L. Sportsman, J. S. Carlson, and K. M. Guthrie (2010/this issue) on the application and evaluation of a specific anger management group intervention called "Seeing Red." The author discusses issues of implementation and use, how practitioners choose and judge evidence-based interventions, and methods for…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether spelling performance in preschool children varied as a function of the method of assessment and letter writing ability. The authors manipulated the motoric element and memory demands of the task by having children spell single words using letter tiles, orally, and by writing. The authors also…

Research shows that parents agree to purchase their children's food requests 45% to 65% of the time. This study examined an after-school nutrition education intervention in terms of its effects on parents' agreement to purchase healthy snack foods requested by their children. Survey data from 755 parents were analyzed. Of the 67% of parents asked…

The authors propose a comprehensive evaluation framework to prepare for evaluating school emergency management programs. This framework involves a logic model that incorporates Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) measures as a foundation for comprehensive evaluation that complements performance monitoring used by the U.S. Department of…

Background: Prematurity and perinatal insults lead to increased developmental vulnerability. The home-based Infant Behavioral Assessment and Intervention Program (IBAIP) was designed to improve development of preterm infants. In a multicenter randomized controlled trial the effect of IBAIP on mother-infant interaction was studied as a secondary…

Introduction: This research seeks to determine the influence exercised by a set of presage and process variables (students' pre-existing opinion towards statistics, their dedication to mastery of statistics content, assessment of the teaching materials, and the teacher's effort in the teaching of statistics) in students' resolution of activities…

The Habitat Program at Wood's Homes, Calgary, Alberta, is an eight bed residential treatment program for conduct-disordered youth who have been exposed or subjected to high levels of violence in their family home. The program was based on the assumption that working effectively with such youth requires consideration of the background experiences…

Mentoring for youths transitioning out of the foster care system has been growing in popularity as mentoring programs have enjoyed unprecedented growth in recent years. However, the existing empirical literature on the conditions associated with more effective youth mentoring relationships and the potential for harm in their absence should give us…

This paper is based on findings from ethnographic research which explored the impact of the Connexions initiative on the lives of young people. The fieldwork took place in three drop-in centres for young people, all of which were delivery sites for Connexions. Utilising the theoretical concepts of identity and self-esteem, it grounded this…

The challenging context of social work interventions require that most intervention studies will be derived from nonexperimental research designs. Two evaluation studies in this special issue employed nonrandomized designs to examine the efficacy of two programs--a police crisis intervention team designed to enhance officers' responses to mental…

The use of simulations in general and of system dynamics simulation based interactive learning environments (SDILEs) in particular is well recognized as an effective way of improving users' decision making and learning in complex, dynamic tasks. However, the effectiveness of SDILEs in classrooms has rarely been evaluated. This article describes…