The program under discussion, the "Open School Evaluation System," consists of three instruments: "Inventory of School Openness,""Open School Teacher Attitude Scale," and "Open School Parent Attitude Scale." These three instruments are designed to evaluate the degree of openness being practiced by a given school, school personnel attitudes toward…

The child-centered Contemporary Australian Preschool Program (CAPP), one of five programs for disadvantaged children in the Mt. Druitt Early Childhood Project, is described and evaluated in this report. Within the CAPP, the child's role was that of initiator and the teacher's role was that of facilitator. Specific objectives of the CAPP were to…

The School for New Learning (SNL) was established in 1972 at DePaul University especially for adult students. SNL students are adults, age 24 or older, who want to accelerate their progress to a degree by using experience as well as classwork for academic credit, and who want to design their own programs with help from an advisory committee of…

The Sudbury Valley School is a nontraditional private school founded in 1968 as a place where each student could be trusted fully to make every decision about how to grow into an adult. This book describes a study conducted in 1991 to determine what became of Sudbury students after they left. Questionnaires and interviews were used to gather data…

The effectiveness of flexible learning systems at the Tea Tree Gully Campus (TTGC) of the Torrens Valley Institute of Technical and Further Education in Australia was examined in a 2-year longitudinal study. Data were collected from 199 interviews and 696 questionnaires completed by TTGC students and staff during 1992 and 1993. Among the main…

Two studies contrasted formal and informal teaching practices in open-plan and conventional classrooms, focusing on grouping patterns and pupil choice as discriminative components of teaching style. (BW)

Results of survey of high technology educational delivery systems in nine two-year colleges (five in the United States and four in Canada) emphasize the use of computers to provide alternatives to traditional classroom teaching. Topics discussed include open education, self-paced (fleximode) learning, artificial intelligence, software, and…

As part of the development of a classroom interaction observation instrument, this report presents the results of a comparative study of group interaction in contrasting educational environments (open and traditional) with children of different socioeconomic backgrounds (middle and lower classes). Additionally, problems of adequately assessing…

This practicum project sought to facilitate change in preschool teacher classroom behavior from teacher-directed practice to child-initiated practice. The goals of the practicum focused on changes that would foster child-initiated activities in order to promote healthy and holistic development, positive self-esteem, and resiliency skills in young…