As post-Taliban Afghanistan moves toward the establishment of a viable educational system, key stakeholders and donors are faced with the formidable challenge of how to most rapidly implement teacher training within an environment of diverse, changing, and largely unassessed training needs. The current article explores the dilemmas inherent in…

Community colleges operate under much scrutiny these days, and these institutions have experienced a growing emphasis on performance indicators as paths to institutional accountability. California's system of 109 community colleges recently developed and implemented an innovative accountability program that used peer group comparison as one of its…

This article discusses the origins, goals, and ongoing development of a high-school-based archival program, emphasizing the critical role of school-university collaboration in facilitating the program's success. The Hunterdon Central Regional High School Archives has initiated programs to collect and document institutional history, highlighted by…

Designers of technology-based instruction wrestle with the possibility that their product will seem cold or mechanical to the user. Given the current understanding of learning as a social process, it is no longer reasonable to restrict the learner's participation in the process of instruction to trivial interactions. We believe that designs will…

The concept of quality of life (QOL) is increasingly being used in the field of intellectual disabilities as a conceptual and measurement framework for program planning and evaluation. This article describes the development of a QOL conceptual and measurement framework, and summarizes how this framework is currently being used both nationally and…

A review of donors' most recent policies highlights that the term "partnership" is firmly embedded in the lexicon of international development. Most donors now only fund INGO programmes if they are partnering LNGOs. This article considers key questions in relation to such programmes: What is meant by an education partnership? Are there…

Teaching artists know that there are many more students who could benefit from learning in and through the arts, but school budgets as well as teaching artists' time and energy are limited. As years pass, teaching artists face the reality that they will reach only a fraction of the students in need. To extend their impact dramatically, some…

Public and school libraries often allow high school students to serve as volunteers out of their own interest, to fulfill community service requirements for graduation or for court-ordered obligations. Community college libraries often rely on college students on work-study but starting a high-school-age volunteer program would create a bridge to…

Times are exciting for adolescent literacy research! Researchers are examining adolescents' reading and writing like never before. This department, Research Connections, spotlights scholarly efforts aimed at improving classroom literacy instruction for adolescent learners. It takes a broad, disciplined-inquiry view of research, embracing…

In the last 20 years the health promoting schools movement has gained momentum internationally. Without strong national leadership and direction its development in New Zealand has been ad hoc and sporadic. However, as the evidence supporting the role of health promoting schools in contributing to students' health and academic outcomes becomes more…

This paper will outline answers to the two central questions regarding improving engineering education: (1) What is the full set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that engineering students should possess as they leave the university, and at what level of proficiency?; and (2) How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? The…

To function in the economic realm, two important resources that individuals need are finances and know-how. Whereas there has been considerable attention on microfinancing, we describe an educational program that focuses on enabling generic skills about the marketplace and complements these important efforts. We conducted research aimed at…

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze a new educational program introduced on an experimental basis at the David Yellin Academic College of Education in the 2005/6 academic year. The program is entitled "Difference and diversity in Israeli society". The focus is on selected social issues and the relations between different…

Understanding the potential or need for ICT support in education within developing countries, requires an in-depth needs assessment to comprehend, elaborate and set the desired priorities of rural schools. A Needs Assessment was conducted as part of an on-going comprehensive evaluation process of an ICT for development project, the Siyakhula…

The "PISA 2009 Technical Report" describes the methodology underlying the PISA 2009 survey. It examines additional features related to the implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to understand and replicate its analyses. The reader will find a wealth of information on the test and sample design,…