The Foxfire approach may be an example of how elementary and secondary students can be prepared by their education to live in a democracy. Core practices of the Foxfire approach include: work initiated by student interest and desire; active involvement in planning, implementing, and evaluating all learning activities; peer teaching and…

The university is a major intervention in the lives of its students as it seeks to socialize them into society's future needs. Organizational climate or culture has a major impact on the motivation of students as it designs their role experiences through it organizational requirements. Stress related problems arise from the individual's life space…

This paper describes the development and operation of a high school orientation program using peer facilitators. The activities of the administrative team (two school social workers, a guidance counselor, and an assistant principal) are described, as is training of upper classmen to be peer facilitators for freshmen orientation. A brief…

The paper is intended as a guide to the levels curriculum for teachers of emotionally handicapped secondary students. The levels curriculum is introduced as a motivational system for behavioral improvement based on a series of steps with increasing student priveleges and responsibilities. Students develop individual goals and learn communication,…

Student congress is a speech activity in which students act as a legislative assembly, write and debate bills, and learn parliamentary procedure. It allows the teacher to make points about advocacy, ethics in persuasion, contemporary issues, and the workings of a democracy at the same time that students develop a feeling of control and mastery,…

The paper examines research on social skills instruction for learning disabled young adults. It is suggested that learning disabled young adults must develop methods of analyzing their social inadequacies. Such analyses may come from the young adults, when they are able to apply metacognition skills to social situations. Parents, teachers, and/or…

This paper explains competency-based education and its positive and negative aspects. The author cites accountability, better instructional plans, and increased opportunity for student success as positive aspects. Problems mentioned include adjusting to new terminology and more record-keeping. Typical components of competency-based instructional…

This paper outlines a speech communication unit that reflects the assumptions of competency-based education. The emphasis of the unit's content is on using knowledge rather than on how the knowledge is acquired. Students are required to participate in the decision-making processes of the unit to get them actively involved in their own learning and…

This paper forucses on the problems and challenges facing the American teacher working in Europe. The discussion is divided into 16 main topics: (1) the limited teaching opportunities in Europe, (2) standardized procedures for employment, (3) the teaching contract, (4) assignment at different levels, (5) teaching benefits, (6) daily changes in the…

This study investigated children's participation rights in two secondary and two primary schools in England, focusing on the child's right to express views freely in all matters affecting him or her, as indicated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Participating were students and staff at two primary and two…

This paper reviews the historical antecedents and theoretical foundation for a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. One neglected characteristic of constructivism apparent in the professional literature is the need to better understand that human relationships in the classroom are often pivotal in helping students construct knowledge.…

Classroom informality helps attune pupil behavior to the demands of bureaucratic life by contributing to pupil learning of formal social behavior. The paper discusses various concepts of school and pupil roles and characterizes and analyzes the function of the apparently paradoxical nature of student rules. (Author/SB)

Current reform efforts in education emphasize role changes for students and teachers within classrooms and schools. A phenomenological study examined one teacher's internal conflict while negotiating the shifting boundaries of power relations between teacher and students. The goal of this study was to explore the processes and constraints involved…

While recent arguments often propose that students should be engaged as writers in service to the larger community, the question remains how to engage students as intellectuals, writers, and creators of knowledge in an intellectual setting that mostly asks them to be passive learners. In Project Renaissance, leaving behind the familiar boundaries…

An ethnographic study of a linguistics classroom produced insights into student perceptions of in-class speech that can contribute to the ongoing debate about the place of student participation in academic classrooms. The study was conducted in an elective undergraduate linguistics course at Michigan Technological University. Fifteen classroom…