The collaborative campus-school district special education teacher preparation model at Arizona State University-West integrated the self-determination literature with the student-led Individualized Education Program (IEP) process and competency-based teacher education. Preservice teachers (n=29) increased their competence and confidence in…

A consultant discusses his experience in assisting teachers and students to develop a democratic approach to education at a new school for high-risk American Indian students in northern Michigan. Strategies included appointing students to the school board, holding weekly student meetings, and creating a judicial committee to review student…

Virtually every Government programme for children and every Government Department in the UK is expected to involve children and young people in its policy development and service delivery (Children and Young People's Unit, 2001). It is the new orthodoxy. Yet, hard questions are often avoided when reciting the mantra of participation. Why bother?…

This book describes "The Learning Community," a minischool that was founded in 1972 by five teachers as an alternative program within a large urban high school in Astoria, New York. The Learning Community included 150 high school juniors and seniors and 6 teachers. The book overviews the development of the minischool, beginning with the…

The purpose of this study was to discover ways in which a music educator can incorporate students with special needs in a music classroom. Music educators seek ways to manage and incorporate these students in the classroom environment. The research question guiding this action research study was: how are students with special needs incorporated in…

This paper examines the potential contributions of a feminist critical perspective to an understanding of assessment in higher education. It uses as a foundation the nine principles of feminist assessment (published in 1992 as an outgrowth of a project on women's studies programs) and an American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) list of…

This digest describes ways in which professionals who work with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds can create an educational climate that accepts and respects the language and culture of its students and empowers them to feel confident enough to risk getting involved in the learning process. Methods of creating such an…

A teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) to adult migrant workers from Central America describes the evolution of her efforts to create a sense of community within the classroom and Latino center and to empower students to bring about social change in the long term. While students were pressuring the teacher to teach grammar, the teacher…

This brief document offers ten principles of effective school design. They are: (1) Clear Focus and High Expectations for staff and students are defining features of an effective school; (2) A Rigorous Instructional Program provides equitable opportunities to learn and enables every student to master challenging content, skills, and learning…

This action research project evaluated a program to improve student motivation, attendance rate, percent of homework returned, and student academic growth. The targeted population was a seventh-grade class in a middle school in north central Illinois. The problem of inadequate student motivation was documented by means of attendance rates,…

One of the priority interests of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is to connect the knowledge and resources of institutions with communities in order to improve the quality of life in community. Partnerships achieve uncommon results. In Santa Ana, California, an unusual partnership of public schools, community college, universities, community…

While the library is at the center of many campuses physically, it is often an overlooked and underused resource in improving the learning and success of first-year college students. Librarians, classroom faculty, administrators, and higher education researchers come together to explore the potential of the library in shaping the student…

This volume is part of a series of 18 monographs on service learning and the academic disciplines. The essays in this volume focus on the use of service learning as an approach to teaching and learning in psychology. Following the introduction, "Collaborating with the Community: Psychology and Service-Learning," by Donna K. Duffy and…

This volume is part of a series of 18 monographs service learning and the academic disciplines. This collection of essays focuses on the use of service learning as an approach to teaching and learning in political science. Following an Introduction by Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson, the four essays in Part 1, "Service-Learning as…

This collection of papers from an international conference on higher education teaching and learning includes: "Fostering Scientific Thinking with New Technologies: A Socio-Cognitive Approach" (Michel Aube); "The 'Classroom Flip': Using Web Course Management Tools to Become the Guide by the Side" (J. Wesley Baker);…