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The college-level general education (GE) curriculum in the United States can have many goals: exposing students to the breadth of human thoughts and ideas; elevating their reading comprehension, writing abilities, [...]

Although research has shown that multi-systemic interventions (MSIs) improve youth psychosocial functioning, MSI dissemination has been hampered by low levels of parent participation. The current pilot project was designed to examine the effectiveness of a brief motivational interviewing (MI) protocol to increase parental engagement in an MSI for youth suspended from middle and high school. Preliminary findings suggest that parents who received brief MI were more likely to attend a parent-training workshop and reported greater satisfaction with the parenting workshops than parents who did not. Parents in the brief MI group also reported a relatively high level of satisfaction with the MI procedures. Implications for future research and MSIs are discussed. Keywords Parents * Engagement * Multisystemic * Motivational * Intervention DOI 10.1007/s10826-010-9356-9

An important goal for educators, especially those in postsecondary education, is teaching students essential skills that will allow them to become lifelong learners. The Association of College and Research Libraries's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology address this issue in Standard Five. Library instructors who teach information literacy courses that focus on the natural sciences can use this standard to develop performance indicators and outcomes for their courses. This article reports on the results of a survey administered to the students in information literacy classes taught by the author. The survey examined students' attitudes toward science literacy and lifelong learning as addressed in Standard Five. KEYWORDS academic libraries, information literacy, lifelong learning, science literacy, standards DOI: 10.1080/01930821003635002

Recent education reform has emphasized the importance of teacher learning in improving classroom instruction and raising student achievement. This article focuses on teachers' learning opportunities, including formal professional development and on-the-job learning that occurs through interactions with colleagues. Using data from 30 elementary schools in a midsized urban school district, the authors concurrently explore the relationships between teachers' formal professional development and on-the-job learning opportunities and instructional change. Results suggest that formal professional development and on-the-job opportunities to learn are both significantly associated with changes in teachers' instructional practice in mathematics and English language arts.

Over the second half of the twentieth century, changes occurred in parent reports of their engagement in cognitive activities with their young children in the United States. This article argues that the growing trend of parenting for cognitive development in young children in the latter half of the twentieth century is associated with the institutionalization of mass schooling and the legitimization of cognitive development as a central feature of early childhood. The results show that all parents increasingly spent more time engaging in activities related to cognitive development so that by 1991, it was normative behavior. in addition, the results show that mothers' education became an increasingly better predictor of parenting for cognitive development over the second half of the twentieth century but in the last decade of the twentieth century, the association with mothers' education remained constant or diminished slightly as all families increasingly engaged in cognitive development activities. Keywords parenting, early childhood, institutional theory, cognitive development DOI: 10.1177/0038040709356566

A workshop, called Families with Power/Familias con Poder, invites Spanish-speaking parents and guardians from low-income families to reading parties as a way to help address the achievement gap of their children. Details on the program's book drive and parentsE involvement in school events are discussed.

I'm thanking for my life And my mother who treats me right My special talents and the performing arts My family and their loving hearts. --Desiree Mom loved me, pop […]

Standard-based grading is a novel concept that assesses the performance of a student within course objectives. The advantages of this system over the traditional system are highlighted.

Physics Education Research (PER) practitioners have engaged in substantial curriculum development and dissemination work in recent years. Yet, it appears that this work has had minimal influence on the fundamental teaching practices of the typical physics faculty. To better understand this situation, interviews were conducted with five likely users of physics education research. All reported making changes in their instructional practices and all were influenced, to some extent, by educational research. Yet, none made full use of educational research and most had complaints about their interactions with educational researchers. In this paper we examine how these instructors used educational research in making instructional decisions and identify divergent expectations about how researchers and faculty can work together to improve student learning. Although different instructors emphasized different aspects of this discrepancy between expectations, we believe that they are all related to a single underlying issue: the typical dissemination model is to disseminate curricular innovations and have faculty adopt them with minimal changes, while faculty expect researchers to work with them to incorporate research-based knowledge and materials into their unique instructional situations. Implications and recommendations are discussed. [DOI: 10.1119/1.2800352]

This paper discusses the creation of essential conditions in schools and school jurisdictions in order to support the inclusion of the diverse range of learning preferences and needs found in today's classrooms. In order for inclusion to be successful educators need to work towards an educational climate and set of practices which include the adoption of positive attitudes; supportive policy and leadership; school and classroom processes grounded in research-based practice; flexible curriculum and pedagogy; community involvement; meaningful reflection, and; necessary training and resources., Introduction The discourse around inclusive education is slowly moving from a justification of why the approach is one which should be adopted, to how it can be successfully implemented (Forlin, [...]

In 4 studies, the authors tested the hypothesis that success prompts standard raising and that doing so helps maintain performance-related esteem by augmenting perceptions of competence. Study 1 showed that students raised examination standards following success in meeting them. In Study 2, professors who were recently promoted to tenure raised what they thought were the publication standards at their university, compared with the standards of their nonpromoted counterparts. Supporting the authors' esteem-maintenance account, participants in Study 3 reported that they would feel better meeting a high standard by a small margin than meeting a low standard by a large margin, and competence attributions mediated this relationship. Participants in Study 4 raised standards when their esteem was threatened but not when it was affirmed, also supporting an esteem-maintenance account. Alternative interpretations of standard raising, including goals for future improvement and initial standard lowering, were not supported in these studies. Keywords: standards, esteem maintenance, attribution, achievement, competence

Student debt is increasing in the United States (the US) at a rapid pace due to the fact that tuition and fees have increased at roughly three times the rate of inflation, thereby putting a disproportionate burden on students and their families and forcing them to opt for student loans. Universities must realize the impractical prospect of student loans and make it their official policy to forgo loans except on an emergency basis.