The fourth volume of a 10-volume report, this document provides a synthesis and analysis of indepth ethnographic case studies of 12 school districts engaged in school improvement efforts in a subsample of the study's 146 districts. All districts were implementing new practices, seven using National Diffusion Network innovations and five developing…

This Policy Research Brief explores the strengths of qualitative research and the types of information it can make available to policymakers concerned with issues affecting persons with disabilities. The naturalistic methodology employed in qualitative research is described. Three specific studies using qualitative methodology are excerpted and…

This report documents the second of two studies on teaching and learning generic skills in high schools. It extends the earlier work by providing a model for designing classroom instruction in both academic and vocational classrooms where teaching generic skills is an instructional goal. Ethnographic field methods were used to observe, record, and…

Following up on the first two phases (1976-82) of the "District Practices Study" of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as presented in a resource book and seven special reports, this report is devoted to the study's third and final phase. During phase III (1982-83), researchers visited 14 sites to describe their…