From a special section, "Talent Awareness Training.

This paper explores gifted education and plans for inservice teacher education in gifted education programs in Iowa. A survey was conducted of 238 Iowa public school districts having programs for gifted students. Initial analysis of the data involved a frequency count for each of 13 survey items which rated program emphasis on major provisions of…

Study examined the effects of staff development specialists, study group teams, and peer coaching teams on implementation of classroom cooperative learning. Staff development was the most significant influence. The article recommends careful selection of peer coaching partners, adequate time for study group meetings, and set agendas for study…

Written and developed to assist speech and language clinicians in the ongoing process of providing support for classroom teachers in their efforts to enhance the oral language of their students, this manual provides a rationale and intervention activities for improving oral language in the classroom. The manual first discusses research supporting…

A survey determined the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education within Iowa school systems. Twenty-four teacher/participants in inservice secondary and postsecondary vocational education training who requested and received PACE (Program for Acquiring Competence in Entrepreneurship) materials were surveyed with a 92 percent response rate.…

A project provided ongoing opportunities for teachers in Iowa to upgrade their expertise in agribusiness management using new technology; production, processing, and marketing agricultural products; biotechnology in agriculture; and conservation of natural resources. The project also modeled effective teaching methods and strategies. Project…

This final report describes the activities and outcomes of a federally funded project that was designed to develop, validate, and disseminate a training program for teachers of students with autism. The strategies taught to teachers were those that have been accepted as best practice in autism literature. Since 1996 more than 500 teachers,…

This project was designed to study the effects of an inservice model on the quantity and quality of developmental mathematics instruction provided by participating teachers. Participants were seven teachers of students in grades from 2 to 6 who had volunteered for the project after being selected as potential lead teachers in mathematics. The…

This report examines the types of professional development necessary to implement successful online learning initiatives. The potential for schools utilizing online learning is tremendous: schools can develop new distribution methods to enable equity and access for all students, they can provide high quality content for all students and they can…

A four-phase project was undertaken to expand adult basic education (ABE) program outreach to meet the needs of the underserved, rurally isolated, older residents of south and southwest Iowa. The first phase of the project consisted of an advisory committee project review, a series of ABE staff interviews of senior citizens residing in the area,…