This report describes a semester of teaching a group of non-native English-speaking students, aged 17 to 40 years and how the instructor identified three elements that appeared to be necessary for a task-based, advanced English speaking class. The three elements were: (1) ongoing needs assessment; (2) collaboration between instructor and students…

Since the early 1980s, the New York State Board of Regents and the State Education Department have advanced a complex reform agenda centered around the development of curriculum and related standards. These reforms have considerable implications for the allocation and use of human resources within schooling systems. This paper reports on a series…

This paper proposes a systematic approach to the application of assistive technology that takes advantage of the strengths of key members of the rehabilitation team. The report begins by describing the roles of the vocational rehabilitation counselor, the vocational evaluator, and the assistive technology practitioner. The limitations of the…

This guide is intended to help those providing services to infants and young children with special needs to work more effectively and collegially with family members at the program and policy level. The guide stresses the benefits and barriers to family participation in advisory activities and offers guidelines for promoting family participation.…

This paper describes the basic features of a collaborative writing exercise used to help 40 English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students write reader-based prose. It presents an actual study that examined the use of collaborative writing to help students draft reader-based prose in intermediate and advanced EFL composition classes at the…

Restructuring of small school districts calls for power changes, including relationships: (1) between the community and the school; (2) among teachers, administrators, and students in the school; and (3) between teachers and students in the classroom. A trip to 25 small town school districts in 21 states revealed few instances of democracy, and…

This guide is intended to set a context for the development of library and information services in Australian schools. The focus reflects recent changes in Australian education, in particular the development of national curriculum statements. These changes emphasize the processes of learning and the consequent need for information and information…

The Schools Reaching Out program attempts to help urban public schools change their relations with low-income parents and their communities and to move closer to academic and social success for all children. The program, initiated in 1988, has grown into the 89-member League of Schools Reaching Out. The New York Cluster of Schools Reaching Out was…

Within the teacher empowerment movement, a theoretical framework for analyzing the condition of teaching as work is not widely considered. Given the special character of the varying expectations held by interest groups focusing on teacher productivity, a concise theory would provide teacher education students a foundation for participating fully…

This book was written for teachers and principals committed to instituting shared governance and more democratic forms of leadership and to help understand today's principalship and what it means to administer a shared-governance school. The data were derived from a study of successful principals in schools affiliated with the League of…

Until recently, corporations of all kinds, including educational institutions, were hierarchical structures. Today, the most successful private sector corporations are flexible collectives of teams and production units. To achieve this success, covenantal relationships, based on a shared commitment to ideas, values, goals, and management processes…

This document explains how community groups can use the Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) process to ensure that skills taught in school are those sought by employers. Chapter 1 explains how the SCANS process works. Chapter 2 is titled "What SCANS Means to You." Chapter 3 explains how to build coalitions,…

This research study used a system of microcomputers interconnected with electronic meeting system software as a possible means of overcoming the grading and participation disparity problems associated with group work sessions conducted in face-to-face meetings. The purpose of the study of 20 undergraduate business students at the University of…

Drawing from experiences at Delaware Technical and Community College (DTCC), these papers discuss the institution's entrepreneurial approach to two aspects of college administration: developing relationships with business and industry, and management planning. Entrepreneurship is defined as the ability to find and evaluate opportunities, locate…

It is possible to give a concrete meaning to the usually vague concept of decentralization by examining four core components. First, at the crux of decentralization is a downward shift in decision-making power. Administrative decentralization entails shifts internal to the institution. Political decentralization shifts authority to external forces…