Search

In March 2020, Advance CTE and the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) convened a Shared Solutions Workgroup of state and national experts to explore strategies for effective Career Technical Education (CTE) data reporting and communication. Over a series of meetings, the workgroup co-designed a set of tools and resources to help states improve their CTE data reporting. This toolkit contains guidance, best practices and tools that CTE leaders can use to create communications that help stakeholders better understand and act on CTE data. The primary audience for the toolkit is state leaders, but district and K-12 or postsecondary institution leaders may also be able to use these resources for the CTE data communications. [For "Beyond the Numbers: Design Principles for CTE Data Reporting," see ED610152.]

This research report investigates how government departments and agencies communicate with post-16 education and training organisations, and how those working in it perceive the communications. Specifically, this report details the findings from an online survey distributed to a cross-section of people working in post-16 education and training. The survey, its distribution and subsequent analysis were carried out by the Learning and Skills Network (LSN). The key objective of the research was to assess how people working in the sector receive and perceive information from government departments and/or agencies. But the report isn't just about statistics. It also offers helpful advice for all who work in government departments and agencies and who communicate with the sector. It doesn't claim to provide all the answers to creating foolproof communications, but it does try to lay foundations to improve the quality and frequency of communication messages to the sector. The research was broken down into the following four themes: jargon in education and training; communication methods; communication frequency and timing; and language and tone. A secondary objective was to assess whether organisation type or role influenced communication preferences. This report details the methodology for designing, distributing and analysing the survey and then presents the results under each of the four themes and makes recommendations for communicators. Appended are the survey questionnaire, sample breakdown, and the survey responses summary. (Contains 23 figures and 4 footnotes.)

Student-led chapter presentations provide an excellent opportunity for instructors to evaluate a student's comprehension of the assigned chapter, as well as the student's ability to present and convey information in a public forum. Although several instructors realize the benefits of requiring students to complete chapter presentations either as an individual project or as a group assignment, only a few are aware of the additional benefit of utilizing David Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory as a presentation tool. Kolb's theory suggests that each person has an individual preference for apprehending information and transforming it into meaning. There are two important benefits of using Kolb's theory as a presentation tool. First, Kolb's theory is effective as a method of speech organization because there are four learning modes that easily translate into four main points of a speech outline. Second, utilizing Kolb's theory as a presentation tool can be viewed as an additional means of audience analysis because it forces the speaker to concentrate on the audiences' preferences for receiving and making meaning of information. This article describes a chapter presentation assignment that allows students an opportunity to utilize Kolb's learning cycle as an effective method of speech organization and presentational tool. Students will gain applicable experience using Kolb's model as a method of organization as they develop their own speech-preparation outlines. [A list of references and suggested readings is included.]

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Leadership Curriculum Modules support leadership preparation redesign efforts in many universities and school districts across the country. The school practices and change processes necessary to improve the school as a system and its curriculum and instruction are the topics that drive this curriculum. This publication provides prospective users with information about each of the modules in order to make decisions based, ultimately, on the improvement needs of local schools. It presents to readers the framework of SREB's complete leadership curriculum, organized in three module strands. Each module provides activities that engage aspiring leaders and school leadership teams in solving real school problems by applying research-based strategies. The modules promote the involvement of university faculty, academy consultants and district-level staff in school-based learning experiences with aspiring principals, practitioners and school leadership teams. The module strands are arranged according to the focus of improvement efforts and target the following audiences: aspiring leaders and leadership teams that are working to improve the school as a system, aspiring leaders and leadership teams that are interested in improving curriculum and assessment, and university-district teams that partner to select and prepare new leaders. [This publication was produced under a grant from The Wallace Foundation.]

Nonverbal communication is fundamental to any comprehensive examination of human interaction. This article presents an activity that can be easily applied by any instructor as a starting point for a discussion of nonverbal communication, or as a demonstration of learning points previously discussed. Instructors should have a slight background in the theoretical perspectives of nonverbal communication in order to debrief and process the activity properly. In the activity, students essentially attempt to "walk" in a particularly expressive fashion, while other students guess at the type of walk being performed. In doing so, the activity demonstrates the variety of inferences people can draw in reference to walking behaviors. This particular activity is applicable in a variety of classroom situations, and its assessment can take the form of informal questioning of the student participants. [A list of references and suggested readings is included.]

If a campus has students who are deaf or hard of hearing, its Public Safety department needs to become aware of some basic information about deafness in order to serve those students well. Public Safety officers may interact with deaf students in a variety of situations: (1) Reporting a theft; (2) Emergency medical situations; (3) Reporting items lost or found; (4) Parking violations; and (5) Requests for services. This tipsheet provides some basic information about deafness and deaf culture. It is important to know that there is a difference in the degrees of deafness that people may have.