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The Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (PEEL) is a well-established Australian example of teacher collaborative action research. The aim of the project, which began in a secondary school in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia) and later spread to other countries, is to improve the quality of students' classroom learning through practice in purposeful enquiry and to help teachers become more independent and interdependent by enhancing their awareness, responsibility, and control of their teaching. The project uses a collaborative action research model, with regular group meetings among teachers, sometimes supplemented by university academics, to share ideas and experiences and to maintain motivation. The group meetings identify good learning behaviors and then devise specific teaching procedures that foster one or more of the good learning behaviors. The project was felt to be successful because it arose from teachers' own needs and concerns about classroom teaching and learning, teachers remained in control of the project's implementation, and teachers worked together for improvement. The importance of the support of senior school staff and the need for effective training of group leaders are emphasized. The project is being implemented at a Swedish school, with teachers reflecting on their own classroom practice and searching for the meaning behind the decisions they make and the behaviors they exhibit. (Contains 11 references.) (JDD)

The history of the recent development of worker education in Australia and New Zealand shows that, in just the past 15 years or so, very significant improvements have occurred in delivery of trade union education. To a very large degree these developments took place because of the existence of a close relationship between the union movement and the Labor Party. Because of the willingness of the Labor Governments in both Australia and New Zealand to set up trade union education systems using federal funds, both countries have been able in a short time to set up systems that rival those of countries with long-established worker education programs. This generous funding has permitted the education movement to reach relatively large numbers of trade unionists in a short period of time. The New Zealand system requires employers to release union people from their jobs and give them paid educational leave to attend classes. The Australian program provides travel payments and subsidies for room and board that enable even small unions to send students even though distances are vast and air fares expensive. In both countries there is a shortage of trained and experienced worker educators, although the countries are dealing with the shortage by inservice training or hiring teachers with union backgrounds. The experience in Australia and New Zealand is quite different from that of the United States, where job training is dependent on tuition and small state subsidies. (KC)