Create a school environment that ensures improvement ideas are more likely to succeed by using the guidelines and strategies from this book. After the authors present the foundational principles of group decision-making in a collaborative school, they explain the functions that are key to a dynamic school that embraces change and improvement: (1)…

A community rehabilitation program (CRP) that focuses on employment services for people who are deaf or hard of hearing can best provide a full range of customized services by working collaboratively with other local agencies. Pooling resources, whether financial or staffing, is an efficient way for collaborative agencies to assist both employers…

Three leadership styles are frequently discussed in the literature today: transactional, transformational, and most recently--transcendental. Managers may be able to put transactional, transformational, and transcendental leadership style theories into practice without inventing a new set of processes and procedures to achieve individual follower…

"Real inclusion" of kinds with special needs occurs everywhere, inside the classroom as well as outside. This is a fairly basic principle, however, it is not always easy to achieve. In this article, the author describes how her family have had to "fight" for inclusive education and shares some amazing moments of inclusion with…

This article will draw on an investigation of teachers' research in a small-scale project involving 19 schools in the North West region of England. The teachers engaged in the research were funded by a government initiative, the Best Practice Research Scholarships Programme, and were mentored and tutored by university staff. The sample is very…

This article presents a reflexive look at a year-long mentoring experience between a university researcher and two third-grade teachers in a lower socioeconomic school. The challenges and rewards of mentoring the teachers in areas of their choice--writing workshop, constructivism, interactive learning methods, and management of cooperative…

The advent of user-friendly email programs and web browsers created possibilities for widespread use of e-mentoring programs. In this review of the research, we presented the history of e-mentoring programs and defined e-mentoring and structured e-mentoring programs, focusing on large-scale e-mentoring programs that addressed issues of social…

Drawing from the online experiences of teachers across the United States who participated in online professional development courses, this article focuses on what educators/participants consider to be the roles and responsibilities of the online instructor. They see the online instructor as facilitator, model, planner, coach, and communicator.…

This is the second in a series of reports that examines the role of coaches in facilitating school change. The report explains that as coaching, or external facilitation of school change, becomes a more widespread strategy for helping schools undergo comprehensive restructuring to create more professional collaborative cultures and to increase…

This report presents evaluation findings regarding the implementation and effectiveness of the Academics 2000, Cycle VIII grant in AISD during the 2001-2002 school year.

In the fall of 2000 the Department of Sociology at North Carolina State University (NCSU) implemented a Phase IV Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative. The goal of this program was (and is) to ensure that doctoral students anticipating entry into a professional position be prepared for all expectations associated with faculty life in a wide…

Teachers with seven years of teaching experience or less (n = 10) participating in a large-scale mathematics professional development program in the United States were interviewed. The goal of this qualitative study was to better understand less experienced teachers' reactions to professional development and professional support in the teaching…

In spring 2005, the Educational Policy Institute was contracted by an anonymous, non-profit, Missouri-based organization to conduct analysis of data from a series of focus groups of 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students. The purpose of the focus groups, conducted by the Change and Innovation Agency in Jefferson City, was to examine the postsecondary…

For anyone in a leadership position, responsible for the performance of others, there is always an obvious concern with the quality of the work performed and the adherence to the mission, vision, values and culture of the organization. Traditional methods of assuring quality performance include some form of performance appraisal, giving feedback…

The authors draw on data from weekly e-mail responses to a questionnaire completed by beginning teachers placed in one-year, paid, internships. Interns were assigned mentors who responded every several weeks, also via e-mail, to a questionnaire about the interns and their development. Data from 23 interns were analyzed. Seven themes were…