(1998). Brain Injury among Children and Adolescents. Tip Cards. These eight brochures for parents provide practical information and suggestions regarding various aspects of managing a child with a brain injury. The brochures are: (1) \Back to School after a Mild Brain Injury or Concussion,\ which covers helping the student in the classroom and changes that occur in school and knowing when extra help is needed at school; (2) \Back to School after a Moderate to Severe Brain Injury,\ which covers preparing for the student's return to school, sharing medical and educational information, and referring the student for special education; (3) \Coma–When Your Child Is in a Coma,\ which covers what a coma is and responding to and comforting a child; (4) \Special Education IEP Checklist for a Student with a Brain Injury,\ which covers unique educational needs, teaching strategies, environmental changes, and writing educational plans; (5) \Neuropsychology and School: Understanding How a Brain Injury Affects a Student's Behavior,\ which covers the role of…
(2006). Workforce: Washington. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education In Washington, the demand for well-educated employees will only increase over the next several years. In the decade leading up to 2012, healthcare occupations will see growth of 20 percent. Teachers will be in demand: nearly 9,000 new elementary and middle-school educators will need to be hired. Computer fields will undergo growth of 24 percent, while managers will see their ranks swell by 17 percent – over 20,000 new managerial openings will need to be filled in all. A report from the Business-Higher Education Forum, a coalition that includes some of the country's top corporate CEOs, states that an educated and diverse population is an essential competitive asset in today's global economy. Not only does a state with a well-educated populace see increased tax revenues from its (better-paid) citizens, it is also able to use the education level of its citizens as a powerful lure for business and industry – a way to build its overall economy. For that to happen, however, a state must… [PDF]
(2011). Minimizing End-to-End Interference in I/O Stacks Spanning Shared Multi-Level Buffer Caches. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University. This thesis presents an end-to-end interference minimizing uniquely designed high performance I/O stack that spans multi-level shared buffer cache hierarchies accessing shared I/O servers to deliver a seamless high performance I/O stack. In this thesis, I show that I can build a superior I/O stack which minimizes the inter-application interference and consequently increases application performance based on our understanding of application characteristics such as reuse and locality, application data access patterns, application execution history, disk characteristics such as spin time and seek time. The first contribution of this thesis is an intelligent client side prefetching module called \APP\ which automatically infers and configures parameters to minimize interapplication disk interference. The goal of APP is to decrease application execution time by increasing the throughput of individual I/O streams and utilizing idle capacity on remote nodes along with idle network times… [Direct]
(2008). Bullying Prevention in the Elementary Classroom Using Social Skills. Online Submission Our action research project report provided students with social skills training to effectively handle bullying situations in the fourth grade. Our study involved 70 fourth-grade students and began Monday, January 14, 2008 and concluded Friday, May 2, 2008. The behaviors documented from the fourth grade students were name calling, exclusion, pushing, disrespect of people and property, and intimidation. Teacher researchers used several tools to document the evidence of bullying. These tools were a student survey, teacher survey, observational checklists, and parent survey. When implementing the student survey, the teacher researchers noticed that over three-fourths of the fourth-grade students felt that they had been bullied. Boys bullied more frequently than girls. Bullying occurred most often on the playground, the bus, and the hallway. One of the most concerning issues was that one-third of the students did not feel safe at school. The strategy that was most beneficial to the… [PDF]
(2008). Evaluating the Early Impact of Integrated Children's Services. Round 1 Final Report. National Foundation for Educational Research The focus of the Local Authorities Research Consortium's (LARC's) first year was to identify the early impact of integrated children's services and the features that promote or hinder success in improving outcomes for children and young people. The research operated in varied localities within the 14 participating Local Authorities (LAs), with one locality being chosen as the focus within each LA. (The term "locality" was understood to mean a sub-area within an authority which had some meaning for the LA and in which frontline children's services teams operated.) The research focused on three key groups of children and young people for whom integrated children's services might particularly make a difference. These groups were: (1) looked-after children (LAC); (2) children and young people with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD); and (3) young people with over 20 per cent absence from school at key stage 3. LAs were asked to select individual cases for each key group whose… [PDF]
(1999). Interactions between Central Office Language Arts Administrators and Exemplary English Teachers, and the Impact on Student Performance. CELA Research Report. Case Study Number 12003. A case study, part of a larger 5-year Excellence in English (EIE) research project, focused on the Dade County (Florida) School District's Division of Language Arts/Reading. Over a 2-year period, four middle and high school English programs in Dade County were studied as part of the EIE project; this part of the project focused on the professional lives of teachers and the practices that support student achievement, specifically describing the interactions between teachers and language arts/reading administrators in the Dade County schools. The study was carried out over one school year, September 1997 through June 1998. Results indicated that in the search for the philosophical base for interactions, three themes emerged: knowing what the research says and sharing it; knowing and staying grounded in the classroom through ongoing dialogues and interactions; and knowing what is good for students and teachers and having a passion for doing it. Data showed that administrators support… [PDF]
(1992). The Teacher's Role in the Writing Workshop. In carrying out a successful writing workshop, careful attention must be given to the proper role and function of the teacher. Research indicates the power of extended peer response to writing and the benefits of writers talking with their peers about their writing. To construct more specific guidelines for the function of teachers in writing workshops, a study was undertaken at a university whose writing program strongly encourages the use of writing workshops. The workshop activities of three teachers were observed over the course of an entire semester. Results show that planning for workshops must give priority to the essential acts of collaboration: student sharing; mirroring; discussing strengths, weaknesses and form; and making suggestions. A priority for these teachers is helping students acquire a useful metalanguage for talking about their writing. Another priority for these successful workshop instructors is the creation of an interpersonal climate in the classroom….
(1985). Masculinity, Femininity, and Psychosocial Adjustment in Medical Students: Two-Year Follow-Up. Although research on masculinity and femininity has increased over the past decade, longitudinal studies addressing predictive elements are lacking. The Rush Medical College Longitudinal Study examines the correlation between masculinity and femininity on the one hand and adjustment, interpersonal functioning, and impairment on the other. During orientation, 67 male and 32 female first-year medical students completed the Personality Attributes Questionnaire and 21 months later also completed measures of psychological well-being, interpersonal functioning, humanistic attitudes toward patient care, and alcohol consumption. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses with interaction terms revealed main effects of masculinity on self-esteem, extroversion, and confidence, and main effects of femininity on hedonic capacity, interpersonal satisfaction, sharing of personal problems, and alcohol consumption. Measures of impaired mood and alcohol and drug impairment were also studied in… [PDF]
(1982). Health Policy Formulation on a Federal Level, Process and Substance. Factors which influence the federal government's policy toward health care include cost, technology, social values, federalism, interest group politics, increased federal involvement, and the current utilitarian attitude toward research. The interaction of these factors results in a complex process of policy formation. For example, when the national government intervenes in health care issues it must consider the conflicting interests: if cigarette smoking is a determinant of health, should the government subsidize tobacco farms? Further, federalism (the sharing of power among different levels of government) creates a disjunction between administrative and regulatory responsibilities. Conflict arises over whether national health insurance should be administered by states or by a centralized federal bureaucracy, or whether health controls should be nationally uniform, tailored to individual characteristics of states. Pressure from interest groups such as medical organizations, the…
(1994). The Power of Structural and Symbolic Redesign: Creating a Collaborative Learning Community in Higher Education. This paper describes efforts to redesign a graduate program of educational administration and leadership at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, shaped by contributions of researchers in contemporary management and leadership theory, feminist pedagogy, action research, and educational reform. A culture of collaboration, inclusion, and success for all was created through faculty information-sharing and relationship-building meetings. The program operated on a cohort model, by which approximately 15 students would be admitted once a year, to remain as a working team over the entire 2 years of the program. Admissions criteria were modified to deliberately recruit students with diverse backgrounds, qualities, and experiences. Rites and rituals were created, teams began to create their own meaning and identity by naming themselves, models of collaborative teaching and learning were established, collaborative action research projects were conducted, mentors were identified for all… [PDF]
(1996). Dads, Data and Discourse: Theory, Analysis and Interpretation in Parenting Research. This paper discusses the use of theoretical premises in the design and implementation of a study of men's perceptions of fatherhood. Forty Australian fathers participated in small discussion groups over a 7-week period regarding contemporary fatherhood. Data were collected using questionnaires, including the Perception of Parental Role Scales, the Social Interest Index and Social Interest Scale, and the Lifestyle Scale. The experience of fatherhood was explicated using constructs from symbolic interactionism and individual psychology. By examining the data from these theoretical perspectives, a synthesis was created between issues which stem from social structures and those which exist at a personal level. Several findings emerged: (1) fathers perceived their highest frequency of involvement to be in meeting children's emotional needs; (2) 70 percent held values congruent with high social interest, cooperation, and altruism and valued fatherhood experiences related to sharing… [PDF]
(1999). Effective Counseling with American Indian Students. Counseling has always been a part of American Indian culture. Only recently has the European American counseling establishment recognized the role of culture in counseling. Developing a historical understanding of American Indians is important to working with American Indian students. It is also important for school counselors to recognize the tremendous diversity among and within American Indian tribes and the impact of acculturation factors and cultural identity issues. The cultural differences between American Indian and European American students are very real and require an awareness of value differences in areas such as time management, goal orientation, group versus individual accomplishments, family orientation, sharing versus materialism, being versus doing, harmony with nature versus mastery over nature, the importance of tradition, humility versus arrogance, and reverence for elders. The implications of some of these primary values are discussed. School counselors must… [PDF]
(1990). Reform, Restructuring, Site-Based Management, and the New Face of Power in Schools. This paper examines the relationship between demands for site-based management and restructuring as they bear on recent theory and research on power in organizations. It also defines and describes the new face of power in the schools–facilitative power, power exercised through, rather than over, subordinates. The bulk of the paper consists of an attempt to show how power sharing is already in place in many current school activities. Six programs that encourage facilitative power are described: the Individual Educational Program in special education; the consultant teacher model, increasingly a component of special education delivery systems; peer consultation; cooperative learning; thematic, multidisciplinary curricula in which staff members work a specific curricular theme into the school activities; and community/alternative schools, which take curricular themes much further. These programs are discussed in relation to four characteristics of facilitative power: resource… [PDF]
(1988). The Danforth Program for the Preparation of Principals: A Project Update. "Changing Roles and Power Relationships.". Over the years, admissions to programs of educational administration have been in the control of university personnel. Under the 18-month Danforth Request for Proposals projects, school districts and universities were to share responsibilities for the admission of program participants, and also for program content, fulltime internships, and the placement of program graduates in administrative positions. The sharing of responsibilities for admission and program content assumed different shapes, depending on the university involved. Few of the districts could furnish full time internships due to obstacles such as cost and principals' opposition to participants leaving their designated work for 10-week or longer periods. University personnel were skeptical toward shared responsibility for admissions and program content, whereas school district personnel were enthusiastic; university personnel liked the idea of full time internships, while school districts had difficulties in…
(1985). A Dialog Day Model and Guide. This guide contains materials for use in replicating a model day-long program designed to foster communication among local-level economic development groups, education, business and industry, and political systems. The model was implemented in 1983 in two regions of Indiana under the name Dialog Day. The first section of the manual describes the rationale, conception, and implementation of the Dialog Day Program by the Indiana State Advisory Council on Vocational Education. Discussed next are the following phases of Dialog Day development and implementation: getting started (creating and sharing a vision, leadership, enrollment); starting over (creating a shared vision, membership, tools, additional members); structuring the event (initial structuring, maintaining a focus, structuring the agenda, establishing a date and location for Dialog Day); recruiting and enrolling participants; practicing and handling the final details (materials, roles, rehearsal); and conducting follow-up…