The Minnesota Defense Conversion Adjustment Project was initiated in 1993 with funding provided through the U.S. Department of Labor's Defense Conversion Adjustment Program to help workers at a Minnesota defense plant make the transition from assembler and related production classifications to machinists and other positions requiring specific job…

Acute intercultural communication problems posed by multilingualism in Papua New Guinea are discussed, and ways in which they are being addressed are examined. An introductory section outlines the language situation in Melanesia. It is noted that the area's language diversity and colonization and missionary activity have resulted in the emergence…

The Michigan Technological University program in German area studies is described. The program is designed for science and engineering students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Its components include: a 1-year scientific German sequence, stressing specialized vocabulary, reading skills, use of reference materials, translation into…

Because a growing proportion of the world's working population is in the informal sector (in work areas generally outside the sphere of state protection), planners of vocational training for adults must pay closer attention to those concepts of teaching and learning that have relevance for the informal sector, and they must develop strategies for…

Two models and techniques for teaching learning strategies to second language learners, particularly in the Asian cultural and educational context, are presented. The models are the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) and the Problem-Solving Process Model. An introductory section gives background information on learning…

This paper reviews the first two years of a model program-evaluation case study which is intended to show: (1) how program evaluation can contribute to academic and professional degree programs; (2) how qualitative and quantitative techniques can be used to produce reliable measures for evaluation studies; and (3) how the role of the institutional…

Problem-centered project work, involving groups who work and learn collaboratively, is an important form of instructional organization. This is especially true for students learning about the design and development of multimedia learning materials, since working as members of design teams will be an important part of the professional futures of…

A project was conducted to expand college-to-work transition options available to vocational students at Orange Coast College (OCC) and to develop a comprehensive multioption model for community college-to-work transitions. The project advisory committee began working to link tech prep to the project's goals and to establish ties with Orange…

The Internet contains a vast array of educational resources, ranging from individual activities to whole curricula. This research study used content analyses and an electronic questionnaire to investigate how and why PreK-12 educators use information from the Internet for instructional design purposes in order to inform the design of an…

A collaborative project of Bank Street College and the Newark Public Schools, the New Beginnings initiative was designed to bring about progressive restructuring of kindergarten classrooms. This study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the impact of the initiative on curriculum, professional development, and…

This paper focuses on the Interactive and Distance Education Assessment (IDEA) laboratory, an assessment system developed by psychology students and faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York) that incorporated learning styles, teaching styles, and other measures of individual difference into the evaluation of interactive and distance…

This document contains four papers from a symposium on assessing employee skills. "Bridging the Training Gap: Identifying Work Place Transferable Skills Needs in Manufacturing Organizations in East Central Minnesota" (K. Peter Kuchinke, James M. Brown, Howie Anderson, Joe Hobson) reports a study of a workplace education program in rural…

This paper describes a University of Girona (Spain) project in which an interdisciplinary group has created an integrated platform for teachers to use to create and publish dynamic and interactive teaching materials that make use of new information technologies. Project objectives are summarized and an overview is provided of the functions of the…

Identifying and describing students in rural schools who are at potential educational risk is the purpose of this study which involved extensive taped interviews with administrators, teachers and students in selected rural schools in Iowa. Various indicators of educational risk in selected rural environments suggest that students are decidedly…

The dynamics of change processes in a rural school jurisdiction over a 5-year period were examined in relation to four specific goals: (1) to document changes since a planning study was done in 1982; (2) to determine if school program changes that had been adopted had reached the classroom according to teacher perceptions; (3) to report how the…