This paper presents the process of conducting a community-wide needs assessment that initially focused on soliciting information about childcare needs of families with school-aged children. The researchers were interested in understanding whether the method designed to conduct the needs assessment helped to foster collaboration, trust, and…

Children who are well nurtured, appropriately cared for, and provided with positive learning opportunities in their early years have a better chance of becoming healthy and productive citizens of nations and of the world. This article reviews the art and science of policy planning for early childhood development (ECD) from a diplomacy perspective.…

This book investigates the ways in which new developments in areas of language teaching practice, such as policy-making, planning, methodology and the use of educational technology are locally adopted, adapted, initiated, and implemented in Vietnam and Cambodia. The region is responding to a large number of significant challenges, including…

"Improving Education Together" offers a step-by-step guide to Labor-Management-Community (LMC) collaboration, an intervention that has successfully improved student outcomes in a wide variety of school districts across the country. The authors illustrate how a culture of collaboration between labor, management, and community stakeholders…

Educators employ different methods of teaching and learning to help their students succeed. One such method is personalized learning, which aims to tailor instruction to the needs, talents, and skills of each individual learner. Rapid advances in technology platforms and digital content over the last decade have enabled more widespread use of…

The purpose of this panel is to discuss how researchers and policymakers work together in two Regional Education Laboratory (REL) research alliances to develop research agendas aimed at changing policy and practice and to provide practical lessons for researchers about the challenges and solutions to working in a research alliance context. The…

Helping more students achieve their dreams involves identifying a wider set of student needs--including financial challenges and family responsibilities--and offering redesigned support services to meet them holistically. This holistic student supports approach emphasizes the need for colleges to redefine the way they understand, design, integrate…

This paper examines the key aspects of stakeholder engagement that can strengthen the design, implementation and sustainability of outcomes-based funding policies. We seek to help policymakers understand the prevailing starting-point attitudes of institutional stakeholders, primarily college and university administrators, faculty and staff, and…

A hallmark of Extension includes the involvement of stakeholders in research and program needs assessment, design, implementation, evaluation, and reporting. A data party can be used to enhance this stakeholder involvement specifically in data analysis. This type of event can not only increase client participation in Extension programming and…

To address the needs and interests of primary stakeholders in a writing program, this article presents a model of "grassroots" assessment that involves instructors from all ranks as well as students in the development, facilitation, and interpretation of assessment results. The authors describe two assessment plans that measured student…

The performance of public schools and the achievement of their students influence many important outcomes beyond the classroom, including one that may seem surprising: health. Studies consistently show a strong correlation between educational level and health over a lifetime, even after controlling for demographic characteristics such as income.…

Epilepsy is a neurologic disorder that results in recurrent, unprovoked seizures. The biomedical burden of epilepsy can be substantial, but for many the social consequences may be just as extreme, with epilepsy victims suffering from social abandonment as well as economic and physical vulnerabilities. Since its founding in 2000, the Chikankata…

Australia is in the process of implementing a national geography curriculum to replace the separate state and territory curriculums. The paper describes the process of curriculum development, and identifies the different groups that were involved. These included the board and staff of the national curriculum authority, geography teachers across…

Studying community engagement provides another lens for examining how neoliberal universities collaborate with external organizations to move closer to the market, often in the hope of promoting the public good. This study examined the tension between the public and private aspects of university-community partnerships by studying the impact of…

Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…