Analyzes the effectiveness of widely used risk factors for identifying potential dropouts, using data from the School Dropout Demonstration Assistance Program. Findings indicate that most risk factors are not effective predictors of dropping out, and that dropout prevention programs often serve students who would not have dropped out and do not…

A study compared 48 cardiac patients who used an interactive multimedia computer-assisted patient education program and 48 taught by tutorial. The computer-assisted instructional method resulted in significantly better knowledge about exercise and self-management of chronic diseases. (Contains 29 references.) (JOW)

Describes the use of administrative data in support of a project to develop outcome measures for the Children and Youth Division of the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia, focusing on safety and permanency indicators for the in-home services program. Considers issues of data file construction and analysis, baseline results for in-home…

This article focuses on the concept of external technical assistance and the practices associated with the concept. More specifically, the focus is on how those who do not work in a school on a regular basis might help the school's staff improve student performance and eliminate the achievement gap. The first part of this article challenges…

Background: This paper presents results from the first wave of a longitudinal study examining the effects of various psychosocial variables on scholastic achievement and behaviour at school. Aims: The main aim is to investigate the nature and strength of the effects of major individual difference dimensions on important outcome variables at school…

Objective: To conduct a placebo-controlled study of the effectiveness of a universal school-based depression prevention program. Method: Three hundred ninety-two students age 13 to 15 from two schools were randomized to intervention (RAP-Kiwi) and placebo programs run by teachers. RAP-Kiwi was an 11-session manual-based program derived from…

Objective: To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of an evidence-based pharmacotherapy algorithm in the treatment of pediatric bipolar disorder. Method: The study reports the results of a study of 64 bipolar type I subjects who were treated according to an algorithm developed in our specialty clinic. All subjects had been diagnosed using the…

Even though teacher education has been successful in preparing students for their future profession, the classroom reality can differ greatly from the inservice training. Many novice teachers therefore find the transition from student teacher to inservice teacher overwhelming To support beginning teachers, mentoring programs--where more…

Over the last two decades, considerable attention has been devoted to the potential of functional assessment and antecedent-based interventions, as well as to the importance of ecological validity in the evaluation of intervention practices. However, despite this increased interest, it is not clear to what degree trends in intervention research…

Criterion and construct validation analyses support the use of both retrospective questions in lieu of a pretest and a methodological innovation to compensate for the absence of a control group in a program evaluation that calls for an unavailable experimental design. The findings obtained with this method present evidence that study abroad…

Social work programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education educate students for practice at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This paper presents a critical analysis of social work education in the United States. The analysis suggests that graduates of social work programs do not appear to master the skills, knowledge and values…

More pupils with autism are now being educated in mainstream settings and inevitably there is increased interest in their interactions with their peers. In this article, Philip Whitaker, of the Educational Psychology Service in Northamptonshire, describes his study of shared play between children with autism and their mainstream peers. The study…

Home visiting programs for families with young children have been in effect for many years; however, this is the first comprehensive meta-analytic effort to quantify the usefulness of home visits as a strategy for helping families across a range of outcomes. Sixty home visiting programs contributed data to analysis within 5 child and 5 parent…

This article critically examines current education programmes for Roma primary school students in the Czech Republic and the impact of these programmes. The research described here, based on in?depth case studies, challenges popular beliefs in the "success" of Roma oriented programmes, as well as the stereotypical negative images of Roma…

Questions about how best to deploy teaching assistants (TAs) are particularly opposite given the greatly increasing numbers of TAs in British schools and given findings about the difficulty effecting adult teamwork in classrooms. In six classrooms, three models of team organisation and planning for the work of teaching assistants -- "room…