This conference report concerns one of the major issues in American higher education--the broadening of educational opportunities for the many adults who find it impractical or impossible to continue their education in the more conventional manner. The goal of the conference was to provide educators with information useful to the design of…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if open education and grouping students according to ability would result in greater achievement in mathematics than might occur in a heterogeneous, self-contained classroom. Four treatment groups, ability grouped and open teaching, heterogeneous and open environment, homogeneous and…

Trends and research in nongraded schooling over the past three decades are described in this paper. The 1960s and early 70s were marked by a strong interest in the nongradedness movement and the British concept of open education, followed by a declining interest in the 1970s. A nongraded revival in the 1980s was facilitated by recognition of the…

Presentation is made of an inservice teacher education laboratory course designed to reduce teacher mistrust of the term "open education," to provide experiences with informal classroom approaches, and to prepare teachers to take effective steps toward opening their own classrooms. The authors discuss laboratory planning problems involving space,…

Learning centers should be considered a fundamental strategy in the instruction of language skills, functioning more in the mainstream of the language arts curriculum than on the periphery. In view of the fact that language is founded on thought that is derived from the learner's experience, learning centers provide a language experience approach,…

Compared were the effectiveness of individualized instruction in a mainstreamed open classroom setting and instruction in a traditional classroom setting on the achievement levels of 56 low ability students (grades 1-6). Two groups of Ss, paired for grade level and IQ, were tested after 1, 2, and 3 years of exposure to the models. There was no…

A structured language arts program based on children's interests can enrich the learning environment of the open classroom. This program should include both open-ended activities, which are outgrowths of instructional units based on group interest, and directed activities, which include the use of learning stations that teach the basic skills…

This paper presents and discusses the evolution of a metadata-based course portal, the Open Learning Repository (OLR). Different instructional models and learning principles are integrated in order to meet different learning and teaching strategies: different metadata models (domain model, instructional model, cooperative and structural model) are…

To relate the design of open education programs to their outcomes, the authors surveyed 72 research studies on the effects of open education and examined the methods and findings of three previous literature surveys on this topic. The 72 studies were divided by an objective statistical test into those showing large effects of open education and…

The purposes of this paper are to focus on the property of group cohesiveness as a positive force affecting students' cognitive and personal growth, and to draw some implications from the research on cohesiveness for teachers who employ open classroom techniques. A bibliography is included. (Author/MLF)

The development of optional alternative public schools is based on four simple concepts: (1) in a democratic society people should have choices about all important aspects of their lives; (2) different people learn in different ways; (3) learning in schools should not be isolated from the world outside the schools; (4) those closest to the action,…

A minicourse is any educational experience that involves a detailed and indepth study of a specific unit or subject, jointly planned by student and teacher, and for which less than a semester of time is used. Minicourses at Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos, New Mexico, are a part of their total packet of educational innovations, including open…

Topics discussed are: (1) student aid and access to postsecondary education (Jack L. Woodward); (2) values in athletics (Grant Dungee); (3) some considerations in planning for postsecondary education (Paul G. Orr); (4) the open university as a challenge for postsecondary education in Mississippi (Cleopatra D. Thompson); and (5) comprehensive…

This study examined the prediction of reading achievement for 144 second-, third-, and fourth-grade children in classrooms differing in program openness. Intercorrelations of nine cognitive and personality variables were factor analyzed, and four components representing creativity, conceptual tempo, attitude, and intellectuality were extracted.…

The paper presents the view that opening up learning beyond school walls and age barriers, although a positive extension of human potential, has left the learners of this open learning to be exposed to the toxic meta-context of a "culture of 'fear'" with its attending violence/hurting that pervades the cultural landscape. Evidence is presented…