An evaluation was conducted of British projects designed to reduce exclusion from school (multidisciplinary behavior support teams, offsite pupil referral units, and in-school centers). Successful support teams and in-school centers had common features: school staff, administrator, and parent involvement; student self-monitoring; flexibility; and…

A survey of parents, teachers, therapists, psychologists, and deaf adults (n=628) and 15 case study sites were used to identify the following good practices supporting deaf students in mainstream schools: direct support for teachers of the deaf, joint planning by support and mainstream teachers, student involvement in decision making, and…

Interviews with parents of students with disabilities following closure of a special school and mainstreaming of students revealed lack of communication and failure to establish partnerships with parents during reorganization. Even parents who supported mainstreaming felt it had not improved children's opportunities because the radical change…

A future perspective should be a component of citizenship education in the British National Curriculum. Development of future-oriented thinking should involve activities that address the following: state of the world, change management, differing viewpoints, alternative futures, hopes and fears, past/present/future, visions, future generations,…

Legislation requiring site-based performance management in British schools gave rise to the development of practitioner research networks, in which instrumental performance appraisal has predominated over humanist and critical approaches. Even marginalized networks have involved important collaborations among teachers, higher education…

Interviews with 10 Hong Kong teachers implementing the Teacher Assessment Scheme yielded metaphors describing their perceptions of roles in student assessment: examiner, policeman, and companion. Acting as teacher and assessor brought conflicting value systems into play. Underlying beliefs about assessment should be examined in order for the…

Examines the role of interviews in educational research using the example of interviews with bilingual mothers and children. Describes interviews as process and product, conversation and narrative and the parties engaged in it as mutually constructing meaning. (Contains 40 references.) (SK)

In Japan, the necessity of a prestigious academic degree for advancement has led to extreme educational credentialism ("degreeocracy"). Despite the assumption that educational opportunities are open to all and advancement is thus meritocratic, social class inequalities do influence access to opportunities and educational attainment. (Contains 26…

Secondary school mentors in England (n=273) ranked teacher trainee weaknesses. Comparison over 3 years shows how prescriptive national regulations for teacher training have influenced perceptions of good teaching. Mentors now emphasize short-term examinable characteristics over practices fostering learner engagement. (Contains 20 references.) (SK)

A study of the ways science students transformed their teacher's description of cells suggests that learning is multimodal, arising from the interaction of visual, verbal, and linguistic communication. It demonstrates that learning is a process of selection, adaptation, and transformation of information across communication systems. (Author/SK)

In a study of 1,312 Greek students aged 8-12, 68.8% reported that bullying bothers them; more boys than girls understand who some people bully and consider bullies "cool." About half do not know whether teachers are aware of it. They reported that parents talk to them about bullying more than teachers do. (Contains 21 references.) (SK)

A research review identified sources of teacher stress and suggested directions for research: (1) monitoring the effect of education reforms on stress levels; (2) exploring why some teachers cope with career reappraisal better than others; (3) clarifying the stress process in terms of two triggers--excessive demands and concern with self-image;…

Rural schools, 68.8% of Russia's elementary-secondary schools, have been seriously affected by economic crises. Rural teachers require understanding of the rural context, knowledge of the local setting, and the ability to raise students' awareness of the rural environment. (Contains 23 references.) (SK)

Reevaluation of Bookstart, a British project to promote library use and book sharing with babies, found that 53% of pilot families had never used the library; younger caregivers were less likely to use libraries. However, data may have been miscalculated if parents used their own instead of children's library cards. Many parents spoke positively…

Qualitative data from five British secondary schools show that strong headteachers have similar, well-balanced leadership styles and strategies and are able to motivate staff and students. Poor leaders use a limited range of styles and strategies. Social context, internal politics, and external pressures constrain the leadership of headteachers.…