(2012). An Analysis of the Relationship between Organizational Servant Leadership and Student Achievement in Middle Level Schools. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Widener University. The purpose of this exploratory quantitative research study was to determine if middle schools in which higher levels of servant leadership are evident perform better on school effectiveness measures than middle schools that exhibit lower degrees of servant leadership. Furthermore, it sought to identify contextual factors that were correlated with lesser or greater degrees of organizational servant leadership in those same institutions. There has been little research concerning servant leadership and the public middle school. Most of the research emphasis has been on corporate leadership, workplace environments, religious institutions, high school, or college settings. Researchers have generally ignored the middle school setting, despite research that demonstrates the tremendous amount of influence it has on the later academic success of students. This study contributes to the literature about organizational servant leadership. It also provides middle school leaders, looking to… [Direct]
(2012). The Relationship between Teacher Satisfaction and Frequency of Interaction with Site Administration. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Northern Arizona University. The primary determinant of student achievement is the quality of the classroom teacher. Some teachers are naturally talented, but the majority of teachers become effective through classroom experience. Unfortunately, the teaching profession experiences a high rate of turnover; many teachers leave before reaching the peak of their effectiveness. If satisfied in their position, teachers will stay in teaching longer and, through experience, improve their effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to determine if a relationship exists between teacher satisfaction and their frequency of interaction with site administration. A review of literature determined that teacher satisfaction and retention are directly related; satisfied teachers stay in teaching. There are four primary areas that affect teacher satisfaction and retention. Teacher preparation programs are an early determinant of teacher retention; programs that better prepare teacher candidates produce teachers who are more… [Direct]
(2007). Young Children Counting at Home. Mathematics Teaching Incorporating Micromath, n203 p24-26 Jul. Learning to count is something that most children start to do by the time they are about two, and parents know from first-hand experience that family members play a big part in helping with this complex process. In this article, the author describes a project involving families sharing effective counting activities. The project called "Getting children counting," based in Leicester, has looked at activities that local parents and family members feel are important for children under five, and aimed to share good practice between families through the medium of a DVD. Many of the counting activities which the parents did with their children lasted only a few minutes, but they were often repeated over and over again over a period of months, until the child tired of them or moved on to something more ambitious. The author hopes the finished DVD will make parents and carers feel more confident about the activities they are doing, and that it will perhaps suggest new things to… [Direct]
(1973). Special Education Revenue Sharing a Must for States?. Compact, 35, Feb-Mar 73. While revenue sharing is a unique and masterful windfall to local districts over the nation, if proposed cuts in current education programs are made and a special education revenue sharing bill not funded, the Wisconsin State Department of Public Instruction will be unable to guarantee the State's fundamental interest in education. (Author/JN)…
(2009). Partnering with the Majors: A Process Approach to Increasing IS Enrollment. Journal of Information Systems Education, v20 n4 p439-449 Win. Information systems (IS) programs have been struggling with declining enrollment since 2001. The IS community has addressed the enrollment crisis by sharing best practices in journals and at conferences. Typically, such practices focus on improving enrollment through either (1) recruitment events or (2) program/curriculum development initiatives. While such efforts have been helpful, additional work is needed to examine this issue in a more systematic fashion within the inter-dependent process of recruitment, retention and placement. Furthermore, current research has been largely silent on the potential role that current IS majors may have in recruiting new students into the major–students recruiting students. This paper shares the enrollment initiatives that Baylor University has implemented over the past 2.5 years that have addressed both of these issues. First, we report on how we embedded enrollment initiatives within the overall student development process starting with… [Direct]
(2009). Influenza Pandemic: Continued Focus on the Nation's Planning and Preparedness Efforts Remains Essential. Testimony before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. GAO-09-760T. US Government Accountability Office As the recent outbreak of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus underscores, an influenza pandemic remains a real threat to our nation and to the world. Over the past 3 years, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has conducted a body of work to help the nation better prepare for a possible pandemic. In a February 2009 report, GAO synthesized the results of this work, pointing out that while the previous administration had taken a number of actions to plan for a pandemic, including developing a national strategy and implementation plan, much more needs to be done, and many gaps in preparedness and planning still remain. This statement is based on the February 2009 report which synthesized the results of 11 reports and two testimonies covering six thematic areas: (1) leadership, authority, and coordination; (2) detecting threats and managing risks; (3) planning, training, and exercising; (4) capacity to respond and recover; (5) information sharing and communication; and (6) performance… [PDF]
(2008). Con Artists Attack Colleges with Fake Help-Desk E-Mail. Chronicle of Higher Education, v54 n32 pA29 Apr. An e-mail scam has hit tens of thousands of users at dozens of colleges over the past few weeks, leaving network administrators scrambling to respond before campus computer accounts are taken over by spammers. Students, professors, and staff members at the affected colleges received e-mail messages that purported to come from the colleges' help desks, asking users to reply with their log-in and password, and in some cases other personal information including birth date. But the messages actually come from hackers who use the information to send spam messages from the accounts. Administrators worry that the compromised accounts could be used to do further damage to the university networks. At least 86 colleges and universities have been hit by the scam messages, says Douglas Pearson, technical director of the Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center at Indiana University at Bloomington. He took an informal survey of college-security administrators last… [Direct]
(2011). The New Digital Shoreline: How Web 2.0 and Millennials Are Revolutionizing Higher Education. Stylus Publishing, LLC Two seismic forces beyond our control–the advent of Web 2.0 and the inexorable influx of tech-savvy Millennials on campus–are shaping what Roger McHaney calls \The New Digital Shoreline\ of higher education. Failure to chart its contours, and adapt, poses a major threat to higher education as we know it. These forces demand that we as educators reconsider the learning theories, pedagogies, and practices on which we have depended, and modify our interactions with students and peers–all without sacrificing good teaching, or lowering standards, to improve student outcomes. Achieving these goals requires understanding how the indigenous population of this new shoreline is different. These students aren't necessarily smarter or technologically superior, but they do have different expectations. Their approaches to learning are shaped by social networking and other forms of convenient, computer-enabled and mobile communication devices; by instant access to an over-abundance of… [Direct]
(2011). Western Policy Exchanges. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education The College Access Challenge Grant (CACG) Program is a federal formula grant designed to foster partnerships among federal, state, and local governments and philanthropic entities to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Created by the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, the CACG program provided $66 million per year for two years to agencies or organizations designated by each state's governor. The passage of the Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 expanded the program for an additional five years and raised funding to $150 million per year. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) launched the CACG Network in 2008, soon after the federal government provided initial grant funding to the states. WICHE designed the network to give Western states the opportunity to collaborate and improve their grant programs by sharing ideas and promising practices with colleagues in other… [PDF]
(2011). TLRP's Ten Principles for Effective Pedagogy: Rationale, Development, Evidence, Argument and Impact. Research Papers in Education, v26 n3 p275-328. The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) worked for ten years to improve outcomes for learners across the United Kingdom. Individual projects within the Programme focused on different research questions and utilised a range of methods and theoretical resources. Across-programme thematic seminar series and task groups enabled emerging findings to be analysed, synthesised and communicated to wider audiences. One outcome of this activity was the development of ten "evidence-informed" principles, which engaged with diverse forms of evidence, whilst acknowledging that "users" would need to judge how best to implement such principles in their particular contexts. Synopses of these principles were published in posters and booklets, from 2006, but the evidence and reasoning underpinning them has not been fully explained. This contribution attempts to fill this gap. It provides a justification for the production of the TLRP principles and describes the… [Direct]
(2007). Virtual Office Hours Using a Tablet PC: E-lluminating Biochemistry in an Online Environment. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, v35 n3 p193-197 May-Jun. The availability of online collaboration software has provided new opportunities for instructors to interact with students outside the classroom. This report describes how Elluminate \Live!\[R], a particular conferencing software package, can be used with a tablet PC to conduct virtual office hours in a biochemistry course. The educational value of engaging students in an online environment, with text messaging, voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP), and application sharing is also discussed. A student perspective is provided to illustrate the advantages of conducting virtual office hours and how the combination of online collaboration software and tablet PC technology can provide an enhanced learning experience. (Contains 3 figures.)… [Direct]
(2009). Challenges for Professional Development of Mother Teacher Educators in Information Communication Technologies. Online Submission, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Indian Association of Teacher Educators (IATE) (43rd, Maharashtra. India, Dec 29-31, 2009). Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have brought new possibilities to the education sector, but at the same time, they have placed more demands on teachers. They now have to learn how to cope with computers in their classrooms, how to compete with students in accessing the vast body of information chiefly via internet and how to use the hardware and software to enhance the teaching/learning process. Therefore the teachers have to spend more time for their Professional Development in order to reach the benefits of ICT to the learners. Ability of teachers in the uses of ICT for education entails sharing of knowledge among teacher educators, intra and Inter-institutional collaboration, and support from principals and administrators. These factors must be in place for the mother teacher educators, accepting their problems and stress they face in order to bring change in the classroom they handle through ICT. Mother teacher educators require ongoing support and opportunities… [PDF]
(2009). Do Universities Generate Agglomeration Spillovers? Evidence from Endowment Value Shocks. NBER Working Paper No. 15299. National Bureau of Economic Research In this paper we quantify the extent and magnitude of agglomeration spillovers from a formal institution whose sole mission is the creation and dissemination of knowledge–the research university. We use the fact that universities follow a fixed endowment spending policy based on the market value of their endowments to identify the causal effect of the density of university activity on labor income in the non-education sector in large urban counties. Our instrument for university expenditures is based on the interaction between each university's initial endowment level at the start of the study period and the variation in stock market shocks over the course of the study period. We find modest but statistically significant spillover effects of university activity. The estimates indicate that a 10% increase in higher education spending increases local non-education sector labor income by about 0.5%. As the implied elasticity is no larger than what previous work finds for agglomeration… [Direct]
(2009). Change within a Teacher Education Program and Laboratory: A Reflective Commentary. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, v30 n4 p404-417. Intentional, systemic philosophical change on an educational program level and on an individual level is often a slow and cyclic process. In this article, we reflect on the journey of philosophical change and growth from a traditional philosophy to an inquiry-based, Reggio-inspired one that occurred on both levels in an early childhood teacher education program and laboratory school over a period of 7 years. As an inquiry group, we reflected on the change we experienced in our own teaching methods, our interactions with staff members and each other, and our perceptions of change in interaction with our students. After carefully and systematically reviewing our reflections, five trends in change were identified. They were (a) recasting the image of the teacher and reevaluating the process of teaching and learning, (b) valuing dialogue, (c) cultivating a reflective mindset, (d) valuing outside perspectives, and (e) building meaningful relationships. The process of reflecting on and… [Direct]
(2009). A Review of HR Practices in Knowledge-Intensive Firms and MNEs: 2000-2006. Journal of European Industrial Training, v33 n5 p439-456. Purpose: The aim of this paper is to show the association which exists among the wide range of knowledge management, knowledge sharing and HRM practices in the knowledge-intensive firms. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed literature review includes the systematic process of research in the following manner; after identifying the main area of interest, key concepts and words were selected, parameters were set to ensure selection of good quality journals, and availability of articles in full text was also considered. Findings: The study finds that one must keep in view the variable personnel demands and extensive training and development needs of knowledge workers, and highlights the need for attention to be paid to unique scientific practices for managing gold-collar workers in knowledge-intensive firms. Research limitations/implications: The need for further empirical, cross-case, cross-cultural and longitudinal studies is highlighted to explore the dimensions of HR practices… [Direct]