Reports on a comparative study of a traditional and an alternative course offered in Victoria, Australia. Student attitudes provided the indices to changes in students' perceptions of themselves and their courses over one-year period. Students from the alternative course showed a greater increase in self-esteem, higher satisfaction with school,…

Discusses alternative programs and schools visited by the Hispanic Dropout Project. Notes a pervasive "disconnect" between alternative programs and "regular" schools, and outlines lessons alternative programs have to offer traditional schools. (SR)

This book argues that the Canadian public higher education system should return to the principles of a classical tradition of liberal education, abandoning the experimentation in school curricula and teaching methods of the last three decades. Taking as its point of departure the Ontario government's initiatives concerning destreaming and the…

This paper describes a study which examined kindergarten students' concepts about authorship and how these concepts affected their view of themselves as readers and writers. The teachers' role in helping form students' attitudes was also examined. Thirty-eight children from two kindergarten classrooms and their teachers were interviewed. The…

The purpose of this study was to compare students enrolled in an alternative school with students in a traditional school on the bases of academic achievement and attitudes toward school subjects. The subjects were 33 sixth-grade students who attended an open education school modeled after the British infant school. The control group consisted of…

Children whose primary school experience was consistently "open," consistently "traditional," or "mixed" (open education followed by traditional) were compared on a number of psychological variables. Subjects were 120 children, aged 10 to 11, from six primary schools in suburbs of London, England. The open classroom…

This study focuses on the differences in operating costs between the traditional 180-day school schedule and the 45/15 year-round schedule in the Bethel School District of Tacoma, Washington. Two approaches were used to identify and analyze costs of the following: building administration, teachers, secretaries, clerks and aides, instructional…

One objective of this study was to discover whether education of students on the 45-15 plan differed from that provided on the traditional schedule. Another objective was to assess the attitudes of the educators, parents, students, and business people of Prince William County toward the two plans. The educational evaluation compared, across…

Patterns of stability of behaviors in classrooms with varying types of structure were investigated by means of a low-inference rating scale applicable to both traditional and nontraditional classrooms. Utilizing a research design which controls for subject matter, period of day, and day of week, eighteen observations were made in each of six…

Research compared Mexico's television-based Telesecundaria (TS) with its more traditional secondary school counterpart, the Ensenanza Directa (ED). The data collected indicated that the TS schools tended to be located in poorer rural communities and to have larger classes and less adequate facilities; its students were generally older and from…

This study compares open education groups and traditional education groups with respect to student attitudes toward high school; creative thinking of students; collaborative behavior among students; and student preferences for intellectual activities, activities involving change or sameness, and activities involving autonomy or dependence. Groups…

To assess the educational effectiveness of open plan schools, a standardized test of reading, spelling, and mathematics achievement was administered to grade 2 pupils in two open plan and ten conventionally constructed schools. Scores on all three measures, plus the average attained scores on an academic ability test, were not significantly…

Argues that technology now offers the opportunity for neutralizing the conflicting demands of child-centered, progressive, humanistic education with the back-to-basics demands voiced in recent years. Analyzes why education has had difficulty in responding to the potential of new technology. (JDH)

Despite the world of rapid change, many have argued that, compared with other social systems, schooling has not changed appreciably in the past century. In an attempt to address this problem, educators, in conjunction with parents and business, have begun to push for the restructuring of time, space, organization, resources, and focus of schools.…

Eight years ago the Cambridge, Massachusetts, public school system initiated alternative schools and methods to make education more relevant to various students. The article describes seven different alternative schools and programs for basics, moral development, preparation for work, relaxed classrooms, or discipline. (MF)