Work-based learning is a way to increase students' engagement in learning and prepare them for employment. Inspired by the apprenticeship concept, the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act supports other types of work-based learning, including visits to workplaces, work-like experiences, and employment. Article notes youth apprenticeship…

Simply placing young people in workplaces does not guarantee they will learn. This article discusses seven effectiveness principles (governing technical competence, breadth, personal/social competence, expectations and feedback, teaching roles, academic achievement, and career paths) and recommendations derived from a youth apprenticeship program…

A study of five Coalition of Essential Schools member high schools, each with different demographics but all involved in reform for at least seven years, yielded clues about effective whole-school reform strategies. Schools are more likely to succeed if they use continuous revisioning, adopt interconnected initiatives, deal directly with…

To counter the factory model, Elizabeth City-Pasquotank (North Carolina) Public Schools have adopted a knowledge-work organization metaphor and applied it to four school subsystems: organizational structure, student accomplishments, teaching and learning, and assessment. Viewing the school as a knowledge-work organization elevates students to…

A reform initiative's demise is often due not to its ineffectiveness, but to its inability to deliver immediate results. Beginning with a clear vision, educators move through a "ready, fire, aim" sequence that creates "products" along the way. Charting progress can help maintain everyone's faith by distinguishing between long-term and immediate…

Proposes the creation of a collaborative school, a new kind of professional development school somewhat analogous to the teaching hospital. The school's three-fold purpose would be to educate children, prepare teachers through intensive clinical experiences, and to provide opportunities for inquiry through research and reflection. Common goals and…

Notes that it is not known whether more time spent in school increases children's learning. Suggests that instead of running the "assembly line" for more hours, educators might try a summer program based on enrichment and fun-time activities as an alternative way to discover whether more learning time would be a good investment. An important…

A Lockheed flight controls engineer describes how, as an undergraduate, he taught first graders basic lessons in physics and engineering by using slides, monkey bars, and other playground equipment to demonstrate principles like gravity, friction, force, and inertia. The children learned more about lift and gravity by constructing and flying paper…

Uses four case studies to illustrate differences in task engagement in 12 students in two "exemplary" sixth-grade science classrooms. Not all students are likely to benefit from improvements in science programs that provide increased opportunities for meaningful learning. For students whose personal agendas were indifferent to achieving scientific…

A University of Michigan study that surveyed students about sexual harassment behaviors discovered that 83% of girls and 60% of boys have experienced harassment. Also, 75% of the victims had also been perpetrators. Another study examined how cultural influences may affect high-achieving Japanese students' use of will power and memorization…

Our minds are shaped by youthful learning opportunities. Different forms of cultural representation (art, poetry, or mathematics) influence the processes and products of thinking, develop different cognitive skills, influence perceptions, can be combined to provide enriching experiences, and call on different skills and forms of thinking.…

Education at its best is an "aptitude development program" that promotes development of learning abilities and effective personal styles needed for future learning in school and throughout life. Much of this development involves adapting and expanding the symbol systems used in teaching and learning to convey essential meanings. Adaptive teaching…

Discusses the process of learning to construct and interpret representations from a social practice perspective. If students need to construct tables and graphs to complete a project report in mathematics or science, they can learn to consider whether these forms are effective at communicating important information. If students merely complete…

The language of thinking embraces the many ways we describe human mental states and processes. The vocabulary of thinking can be roughly divided into terms marking an epistemic stance, terms describing an intellectual process, and terms describing an intellectual product. Reasoning is not the only important cognitive process. Thinking-rich…

Explores mind/media relationships and discusses how culture's symbolic forms affect learning and thinking. The socially held and communicated views of various media appear to affect the way children handle them, the depth of their information processing, and what they actually learn from them. Media's symbolic forms of representation have both…