Academic Development Program students face a special challenge. Within a few short weeks, they must hone their reading, writing, and speaking skills while scrambling to adjust to life in college. Usually, pre-freshmen enrolled in the Academic Development Program are not familiar with the demands of academic reading, writing, and oral response. For…

Teachers are given too much power in a reading classroom. We choose the texts, design the course syllabuses, and put up a written exam after another written exam. However, we cannot stop our students from becoming book haters as soon as they leave our classroom. By implementing literature circles, we teachers might return the power back to our…

This paper suggests the need for a research-validated framework to help preservice and inservice teachers and higher education faculty understand fundamental learner needs that must be met in any setting and any reform effort. It describes a learner-centered framework based on the research-validated "Learner-Centered Psychological…

Describes a pilot project using electronic mail and conferencing in college courses including blind and deaf students. The effectiveness of group interaction is compared to the standard classroom. The use of communication technologies in the design of educational systems to simultaneously transcend physical distance and physical disabilities is…

This review of the literature defines the concept of student empowerment, discusses the implications of student empowerment in educational settings, and outlines strategies for facilitating increased empowerment. A definition of "empowerment" as "bringing into a state of belief one's ability to act effectively," is offered and the critical…

Students must learn how to empower themselves and how to empower others if they are to survive in modern organizations (corporate, educational, and governmental). Traditional bureaucratic pedagogies, to which many faculty are accustomed, neither teach nor develop these skills. Furthermore, the use of bureaucratic pedagogies limits student…

In 1994, Norway implemented large-scale educational reforms that altered the face of education in that country. An overview of these changes in upper-secondary education is presented in this paper. The report describes how international competition created a sense of urgency, prompting the government to rush in with wholescale education changes.…

The Simi Star Project, a collaborative grant among six southern California school districts (Simi Valley, Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Orcutt, and Point Hueneme) and IBM, tested the effectiveness of computers in the classroom and the effects of integrating technology into the curriculum. Six networked computers were placed in kindergarten and…

A study, funded by the Australian government, explored differences in the literacy practices of schools, families, and community groups. In particular, the study examined the matches and mismatches between the discourse practices of home and school, and the impact that any differences had on students' school success. Also observed were innovative…

If personal writing empowers students to hear their own voices and to "see themselves as writers," then personal writing has value for basic writing students, whose voices have tended to be silenced and who see themselves as anything but writers. From hearing their voices in writing, and from identifying multiple sources and rhetorical…

Using Ariadne's thread in the narrative of the labyrinth as a metaphor for the elusiveness of language, this paper explores the concept of "self" to prepare for the discussion of autobiography as a "tool" for teaching writing, and to create a connection between a politically enabled self, a private self, and critical theory.…

This paper examines the teacher's role in elementary and secondary school writing workshops--the teacher as Dostoevskian novelist creates a classroom novel and takes up relations with student-characters. The paper focuses on: the rejection of traditional relations among novelist and character, teacher and student, and the embrace of new ones; how…

This paper takes a ethnomethodological look at a typical Experiential Self-Empowerment Approach (ESA)-using speech class to see how the ESA uses 12 assumptions as background expectancies (Heritage, 1984) to accomplish personal growth in college public speaking classes. The following assumptions are addressed: (1) students deserve "something…

This paper presents guidelines for creating a collaborative approach for communication among teachers, parents, and students to plan for their transition toward further education or work in adult life and to become informed self-advocates. Guidelines for teachers are presented and include: (1) establishing a system that places the student at the…

A project called the "Tesosros" (Treasures) Literacy Project matched six Spanish-speaking ESL (English as a Second Language) students, working collaboratively, with an equal number of "at risk" Anglo counterparts from a regular section of grade 11 American Literature at a high school in southeast Michigan. Students came…