Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms…

The fourth volume of a 10-volume report, this document provides a synthesis and analysis of indepth ethnographic case studies of 12 school districts engaged in school improvement efforts in a subsample of the study's 146 districts. All districts were implementing new practices, seven using National Diffusion Network innovations and five developing…

To satisfy federal requirements, the National Center for Education Statistics and the Division of Adult Education and Literacy planned a nationally representative household sample survey to assess the literacy skills of the adult population of the United States, to be conducted by the Educational Testing Service with the assistance of Westat, Inc.…

Reports on the method and findings of a study which used unobtrusive testing to measure the accuracy and efficiency of search strategies by library personnel when dealing with the technical report literature. A copy of the test questions used in this study is appended. (CLB)

The first in a 10-volume report, this volume provides an overview of the NETWORK school improvement study as a whole, placing it within the context of federal dissemination-related school improvement policies and programs. Existing research on these programs is examined and synthesized, and the evolution of the federal role in dissemination is…

This report documents the second of two studies on teaching and learning generic skills in high schools. It extends the earlier work by providing a model for designing classroom instruction in both academic and vocational classrooms where teaching generic skills is an instructional goal. Ethnographic field methods were used to observe, record, and…

Following up on the first two phases (1976-82) of the "District Practices Study" of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as presented in a resource book and seven special reports, this report is devoted to the study's third and final phase. During phase III (1982-83), researchers visited 14 sites to describe their…

An ethnographic study is presented, which attempts to gain a better understanding of the gap between California high school students who are at-risk, who eventually drop out, and who are academically successful. Focus is on families, teacher student relationships, peer influence, and social context. A sample of 10 high achieving and 10 low…