History tells the Civil Rights struggle through the lens of Selma, Alabama. Bloody Sunday, an event that galvanized a generation, provided the background for an interdisciplinary team of scholars, educators, local historians, and community members to focus on place-based learning experiences and explore civil rights education. The Selma event is…

From 2016-2019, Jacksonville State University (JSU) librarians embraced the call to incorporate increased active learning into traditional library information instruction. Librarians began this process by integrating the use of a scavenger hunt into the Houston Cole Library's new orientation tailgate event. Breakout EDU Escape Room kits with a…

A study examined the role of elementary and secondary school librarians/media specialists in Alabama in promoting reading growth, assisting classroom teachers, and teaching reading skills. Surveys were sent to all public school librarians in Alabama, and to their administrators. Results, based on 250 randomly selected surveys from librarians and…

A four-week summer project for 100 rural tenth graders in the University of Alabama's Biomedical Sciences Preparation Program (BioPrep) enabled students to acquire and apply social sciences research skills. The students investigated drinking water quality in three rural Alabama counties by interviewing local officials, health workers, and…

A study investigated whether the frequency of a legislator's direct contact with constituents was related negatively to the legislator's evaluation of mass media as sources of information on constituent concerns. The study also explored whether the legislators' evaluations of mass media as sources of information on constituent concerns were more…

Two studies examined the effectiveness of a model designed as an instructional aid in teaching college students how to respond to potentially discriminatory employment interview questions. Subjects in the first study, 91 students enrolled in communication classes in a mid-size Wisconsin university who were told that they would be asked to respond…

Stakeholder surveys are advocated as a panacea for many problems of needs assessment evaluation research utilizing surveys. Stakeholders are individuals who have a "stake" in the outcome of a needs assessment evaluation. Stakeholder surveys are appropriate for the predesign phase of a program evaluation. The surveys are often referred to…

This paper revisited the findings of a study of school effectiveness changes by J. Gray and others (1995) and compared them to findings from two other studies, one by J. Freeman and C. Teddlie (1996) and the other conducted for this report. In the study by Gray and others, the researchers used data from three cohorts of secondary school students…

A study compared the writing abilities of children in a whole language classroom with those of children involved in a skills-based classroom. Subjects, 37 African-American students in two heterogeneous first-grade classrooms in a low socio-economic area school in the inner-city of a large Alabama city, completed a reading/writing assessment (a…

HIV/AIDS are affecting increasingly complex, more diverse populations, particularly communities of color. Despite National prevention efforts designed to speak to marginal experience, these communities continue to be disproportionately affected, especially in rural areas of the country which are difficult to access with communication about HIV. A…

Three major purposes comprise the focus of this study. First, it determined the perceptions of Alabama public school principals regarding the degree of importance and extent of implementation of 21 specific educational reform recommendations from 7 major national reform proposals issued in 1983. Second, it discovered the perceptions of these same…

A study compared the teaching of composition in secondary British and American schools in the areas of English, social studies, and science. Surveys were returned by 223 teachers in the southeastern Alabama area (out of 310 surveys sent) and by 48 teachers in Suffolk County, England (out of 87 surveys requested). Low response from teachers in…

This report summarizes research supports addressing three areas as targets for educational improvement in Alabama: beginning reading, expansion of reading power, and intensive intervention for those who are reading below grade level. The paper also describes Alabama's statewide initiative to implement best practices in these areas and summarizes…

This study, undertaken in the summer of 1986, was to develop a comprehensive evaluation and needs assessment for the Alabama Judicial College. Qualitative research techniques (participant observation and in-depth interviewing) were applied to collect the necessary data. Judicial employees were observed in courtroom, office, training and social…

In a sociolinguistic study of the verb phrase in Southern White English, a pattern of change in progress was observed. The 14 variables studied showed that certain variants were increasing, others decreasing, and yet others stable across time within the community, and that each variable's change was progressing in a wave sensitive to age, social…