In 1991-92, a project was undertaken at Napa Valley College to update the college's 1990 Comparative Study of Vocational Nursing Curriculum and Employer Requirements, to develop a model articulation program for licensed nurses pursuing associate degrees, and to produce a guide for recruiting and retaining underrepresented groups in vocational…

A project was conducted to develop three metric education modules for use with bilingual (Spanish and English) students in postsecondary and adult vocational education programs. Developed for the first section of each module, five instructional units cover basic metric concepts: (1) measuring length and finding area, (2) measuring volume, (3)…

A description is provided of Los Angeles Valley College's Life Science Learning Center (LSLC), which provides: (1) a resource center addressed to the individualized learning needs of students served by the Biology Department; (2) a learning environment enabling students to proceed in self-paced, activity-centered, concept-oriented experiences in…

A national survey of community college department chairpersons was conducted in 1978 to determine: (1) the purposes, procedures, criteria, and standards used to evaluate their administrative performance; (2) their opinions about the present and the desirable components of chairperson appraisal systems; and (3) how chairpersons from various…

The Fresh Start (FS) program was initiated at Gainesville College (GC), in Georgia, to target at-risk students and improve their overall academic performance and retention. The program provides immediate placement of students into remedial classes, academic support services, intrusive counseling, and long-term computerized tracking to assess…

This study assesses the utility of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (A.S.V.A.B.) in predicting the academic success of students enrolled in the Automotive Service Specialist curriculum at the State University of New York Agricultural and Technical College (Alfred, New York). This document, part I of a two-part study, describes the…

The research literature suggests that the decade of the '80s is producing a generation of professors coping with surprisingly high levels of job stress. Key reasons include inadequate participation in governance and institutional planning, work overload, low pay, poor working conditions, inadequate recognition, unrealized career expectations, and…

In the first part of this paper, training models and procedures of alcohol and drug counselors at paraprofessional levels are compared and elaborated. Findings from a review of more than 120 different training programs throughout the United States reveal that none of these programs are designed specifically to train behaviorally-oriented drug and…

Examines social influences on the reading processes of four adolescent readers, as well as the relationship between social-cognition and these readers' responses to short stories. Suggests that competence, pragmatics, and volition are intricately related to the likelihood that readers will bring social-cognitive processes to bear on reading. (SR)

Reports a study of teachers' and writers' interpretations of scenario assignments. Finds that, among the three groups tested (graduate students trained to teach rhetoric, academically successful undergraduate students trained as tutors, and entering freshmen) experienced writers' interpretations adhered most closely to the interpretive community's…

Describes a sequence of four studies that explored how people composed sentences while writing expository essays. Among the findings were that the sentence composition process was often guided by a writing plan, and the most frequent changes accomplished by revision of parts were word choice, aspect of meaning, and grammatical structure. (HOD)

Studies 110 sixth grade students to determine whether the writing of persuasive discourse can be improved by instruction and the effect of reading on writing and of writing on reading within the mode of persuasion. Finds that ability to write persuasion can be improved by instruction and that students transferred knowledge from reading to writing.…

Describes some of the primary features of educational criticism, an arts-based approach to qualitative inquiry. Examines the aims of this approach and discusses four dimensions of educational criticism: descriptive, interpretative, normative, and thematic. Addresses questions of rigor and identifies three criteria (consensual validation,…

Describes the development of the Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ), which provides scales that measure seven different aspects of readers' orientation toward literary texts: Insight, Empathy, Imagery Vividness, Leisure Escape, Concern with Author, Story-Driven Reading, and Rejection of Literary Values. Reviews evidence for the LRQ's…

As part of a state-mandated assessment process, faculty and students need innovative approaches which can empower them to learn, grow, and change in the classroom. The University of Missouri-Kansas City Department of Communication Studies uses three types of student portfolios: (1) a university-wide portfolio of the student's work in all courses…