This study examines the process of change among grade 4 teachers (students aged 9-10 years) who participated in a yearlong Teacher Quality Grant innovation program. The concerns-based adoption model (CBAM), which informed the design and implementation of the program, was used to examine the process of change. Two questions guided the…

The semester of fall 2004 presented a challenge to the History Department of the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK). A Nebraska state senator contacted the department and inquired about the authors' willingness to become involved in the congressional Veterans History Project. The usual call went out to the department and they considered a…

Within the context of a Europe-wide project UNITE, a number of European partners set out to design, implement and validate a pedagogical framework (PF) for e- and m-Learning in secondary schools. The process of formulating and testing the PF was an evolutionary one that reflected the experiences and skills of the various European partners and…

The appropriate and safe use of psychotropic medications in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders is discussed. Best practices principles include completing a psychiatric and medical evaluation, creating a treatment and monitoring plan, and educating the patient and family about the disorder and the treatment.

Higher education institutions struggle with planning for future needs, growth, and, sometimes, contraction. As student populations expand and as faculty members adopt new technologies, universities struggle to support these needs. To the casual observer, it may seem that the technology planning process is haphazard. This article details a process…

This paper reviews empirical research on the use of evaluation from 1986 to 2005 using Cousins and Leithwood's 1986 framework for categorizing empirical studies of evaluation use conducted since that time. The literature review located 41 empirical studies of evaluation use conducted between 1986 and 2005 that met minimum quality standards. The…

Higher education institutions often have large, complex websites, necessitated by the many services, divisions, and areas involved in campus operations. The fall 2008 enrollment at Utah Valley University (UVU), for example, was 26,696 students in over 50 different degree areas. UVU also has 1,455 full-time staff and another 3,285 part-time staff.…

The Special Education Needs Code of Practice (2001) states that both parents and children should be actively involved in the decisions that surround the child's special educational need. In particular, it acknowledges the "unique knowledge" that children have of their own needs and advocates that they should take part in the setting and evaluating…

Fidelity measurement has increasing significance when making claims of educational practices being effective in today's classrooms. This study explored the reliability, using multi-informants, and convergent validly, using multi-sources, for curriculum fidelity. There were significant differences between the outside observer and teacher and…

Most policies seeking to improve high school achievement historically either provided incentives for educators or punished students. Since 1991, however, over a dozen states, comprising approximately a quarter of the nation's high school seniors, have implemented broad-based merit scholarship programs that reward students for their high school…

Community-based mental health services are increasingly challenged by waiting lists for individual counseling. A strengths-based, brief solution-focused counseling (BSFC) model was used to increase the number of clients served while maintaining high-quality services. Clients who participated in BSFC experienced both shorter wait times than did…

Within an incredibly short period--perhaps less than twenty-four months--the need for emergency preparedness has risen to a higher level of urgency than at any other time in the history of academe. Large or small, public or private, higher education institutions are seriously considering the dual problems of notification and communications…

A descriptive study of vowel spelling errors made by children first diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 79) revealed that phonological errors, such as "bet" for "bat", outnumbered orthographic errors, such as "bate" for "bait". These errors were more frequent in nonwords than words, suggesting that lexical context helps with vowel spelling. In a second…

One of the ongoing challenges that physical educators, coaches, and fitness professionals face is discovering and implementing motivational strategies that encourage long-term participation and effort. This challenge exists in public school physical education classes, on the playing field, and in structured adult physical activity settings. In…

This article presents part 2 of the series on emergency preparedness. Here, the author offers suggestions that exceptional families can use to prepare for emergencies. While the circumstances--terrorist events, disease epidemics, natural disasters--may vary, emergency preparedness experts agree on one thing: It is important for families,…