The premise of this presentation is that clinical experiences are superior to many traditional kinds of field placements. Four types of clinical experiences are described: participant observation in special education classrooms; a team planned cooperative teaching experience; participation in the activities of a college reading clinic; and…

A description is provided of the rationale for, objectives of, and unique and innovative features of St. Petersburg (Florida) Junior College's (SPJC's) Interdisciplinary Studies Program (IDS). First, the paper discusses the national context of renewed attention to the liberal arts, the higher education milieu in Florida, and SPJC's general…

The learning community movement is a response to several widespread educational problems, including the mismatched expectations of career-oriented students and research- and discipline-oriented faculty; the inadequate amount of intellectual interaction between students and between faculty and students; the lack of coherence among most of the…

A survey of business and industrial training team supervisors and members was undertaken in order to identify the most important entry-level competencies required of instructional development specialists in a variety of business and industrial settings. The study sample of 300 was randomly selected from the approximately 2,850 members of the…

An introductory theatre course at Prince George's Community College (Maryland), taught by a team of three instructors, makes use of contract grading to permit students to become actively involved in theatre on several levels of interest. This paper describes the course and provides a course syllabus, list of contract options for the course, and a…

At North Shore Community College (NSCC), students in career programs comprise 70% of the student population. To counter the vocational-school effect of programs heavily emphasizing career training, interdisciplinary, team-taught courses were initiated. However, the time required in planning, scheduling, and grading along with other problems…

Dismissing common metaphors for the school such as the "knowledge factory" or the "cure for the disease of ignorance," the author makes preliminary observations leading toward some sort of new metaphor that would better describe the school as a collection of autonomous and self-regulated individuals. He presents what he calls four "notions" that…

A renegotiation of relationships between special education faculties and other units of colleges of education is underway in order to prepare a new corps of regular teachers who are capable of carrying out their expanded roles in serving handicapped students. The federal government has provided eighty one "Deans' Grants" funds to be used mainly…

An ethnographic study of teacher teaming was conducted at an urban high school, exploring the effects the teaming process had on teachers' and students' experiences. Heritage High School was a relatively large urban school in the Midwest, employing over 100 teachers and serving over 1,200 students. The school has a graduation rate of only about…

This paper reports on a study that examined the concept of trust-a critical element in the social glue that bonds the organizational team together and enables effective collective action in schools. It delineates an organizational context for consideration of the concept of trust in interactions in restructured schools. The study suggests that the…

This paper focuses on a case study of an alternative school for young offenders. It describes the efforts of organizational members to bring about improvement by facilitating organizational learning. The case study builds on current research related to organizational learning and team leadership in educational settings and attempts to answer the…

This paper explores the characteristics of teachers and their roles at Celebration School, an elementary/secondary school in which the high profile, innovative curriculum, team structure, guiding principles of learner-centered instruction, and high expectations for students create a demanding environment for teachers. Data were collected through…

This study took an in-depth look at the collaborative work of teachers engaged in curriculum restructuring, and explored how individual teachers' perceptions inform and are informed by such collaboration. The objective of the study was to explore how teachers' individual knowledge, experiences, and curriculum orientations affected their…

A writing instructor whose assignment was to put into place a writing across the curriculum (WAC) project at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's engineering college quickly found that this would be a difficult task, especially the prompting of a student-centered writing intensive pedagogy. The undertaking was broken into two steps: the…

This study examined three teams of teachers at three high schools (in a relatively large midwestern school district) as they designed and implemented a teaming project for interdisciplinary teaching entitled the Partners Program. The study focused on two findings related to the demise of this innovation: misconceptions by participating teachers…