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The role of summer session attendance in time-to-degree was studied in a two-phase investigation. In the first phase, a survey was used to collect data from 10 universities on the entering class of 1992 who took a degree in arts and sciences. This cohort was followed to graduation periods of less than 4 years, 4 years, 5, years, 6 years, and more than 6 years. Survey items addressed time to complete bachelor's degree, gender, Scholastic Assessment Test scores, and grade point averages at the time of graduation. In the second phase of the study, telephone interviews were conducted with 33 students at the University of Virginia who graduated in less than 4 years. Findings from both phases show the important role summer session plays in providing opportunities for college students to complete their bachelor's degrees in 4 years. Summer session also plays an essential role in supporting students who wish to graduate in less than 4 years. Attending summer session did not deter academic achievement, and attendance in summer sessions had no gender preference. Financial pressures and the need to save money motivated students who completed their degrees in less than 4 years. The longer the time required for students to complete degrees, the more work and financial aid was needed to cover their expenses. The paper discusses the implications of reducing the time required to complete a degree program. (Contains 21 references.) (SLD)

The writing skills of 71 college seniors were assessed at a medium-sized public university. Blind scoring, a standard scoring guide, and trained graders were used. Curricular writing emphasis was assessed through a syllabus study, yielding a curricular emphasis score. The academic records of these students revealed the number of courses taken in each discipline, and a weighted sum was derived for each student with weighting by the percent of syllabi for courses taken that showed "strong emphasis" in writing in each discipline. Controlling for entry-level skill in writing, writing score and curricular emphasis were highly correlated. Implications for assessment practice are discussed. (SLD)

This paper is the third in a series that focuses on the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. It reports on a study of what parents know and think about campus safety issues and the Clery Act. During a college's summer orientation program, parents were selected at random from those who passed the checkout table at the end of the program. Responses of 435 parents who also completed a brief questionnaire show that parents' knowledge of the Clery Act and their use of the information contained in the federally mandated report is low. Parent response to crime awareness strategies and administrators who shared this information with them varied by parent educational status and experience with children in college. (SLD)

This study examined the potential consequences of reductions in the fiscal support of 4-year public colleges and universities in general and in Virginia in particular from the perspective of academic officers. In 2002, a qualitative case study was initiated in conjunction with the chief academic officers of Virginia's 15 4-year public colleges and universities. The data from interviews, correspondence, and surveys were used to assess the institutional perspective relative to the 2002 General Assembly appropriation reductions and the October 2002 budget cuts. Because the timing of the diminished funding did not correspond with academic planning cycles and other factors, comparative quantitative data reflecting the budget impact will not be available until, at the earliest, the end of academic year 2003-2004. However, early data collection suggests the concerns of academic officers expressed in this study were well founded. Academic officers anticipated that students would experience significant direct and indirect costs associated with Virginia's fiscal crisis, especially reductions in academic support services and larger classes. Fewer faculty available for advising and reductions in services such as library hours were also expected. Institutions were apprehensive about the influence of economic uncertainly and reductions in research support on their ability to retain professors, since faculty evaluations are heavily reliant on research productivity. Academic officers indicated that the public 4-year institutions vary widely in their ability to sustain operations through the current economic crisis. Observations from this study present compelling evidence of potential damage to Virginia's higher education system. Disadvantaged students in particular will be adversely affected by budget cuts. (Contains 3 tables and 50 references.) (SLD)

Many departments of educational administration might be operating disjointed master's degree programs. On one hand, regular faculty members teach foundation courses and research theory. On the other hand, adjunct professors, who make up an "invisible faculty" and commonly work in isolation from the regular faculty and even one another, teach the practical courses in educational administration. This publication reports on an informal study conducted by the American Association of School Administrators that explored the nature of this situation. Surveys were sent to school superintendents, 295 of whom responded. Responses show that these superintendent-adjunct professors commonly teach core courses, such as school finance, school law, educational leadership, and administration. They commonly develop their own course syllabi without guidance from university colleagues. They interact most frequently with fellow superintendents instead of university professors. Because they are already paid through their superintendent jobs, they are not bothered by low adjunct salaries. Their primary motivation for being an adjunct professor includes personal growth, passing on their professional knowledge, and hopes of improving the training of new leaders. Little communication exists between adjunct and regular faculty members, which adjunct faculty members are comfortable with because of a well-developed sense of who and what they are. (RT)

This report is the second in a series that focuses on the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. It reports on a study of the effects of the Clery Act on law enforcement on college and university campuses, how institutions are distributing the mandatory reports on campus crime, and whether the Act has had any impact on reducing campus crime. Researchers surveyed 944 senior campus law enforcement officials at institutions covered by the Clery Act. Responses were received from 371 officials, 83% of whom were chiefs of campus police/security. A majority (57%) thought the Act has been effective or very effective in improving the quality of campus crime reporting procedures, and a similar margin credited the Act with improving the quality of campus safety programs. Institutions distributed the Clery mandated reports in a variety of ways, with Internet Web sites and campus mail the most often used methods for campus students and employees, and U.S . mail for commuter students. Seventy percent of respondents reported that campus crime rates have remained relatively constant since the passage of the Clery Act, and 90% of respondents said the Act had no impact on campus crime. However, 53% of respondents believed that providing the campus programs encouraged by the Act increased the confidence students have in their campus police forces. (Contains 4 tables and 16 references.) (SLD)

A federation of alternative schools called New Collaborative Schools (NCS) has been proposed to improve educational outcomes of academically able but low-performing high school students. The NCS model would combine the advantages of high school-college collaborations with the most effective practices for improving the educational experiences of "at-risk" high school students. This report provides background for the NCS model. After discussing what constitutes an at-risk student, the report reviews various types of alternative schools, including alternative classrooms, schools-within-schools, continuation schools, career academies, tech-prep schools, magnet schools, and separate alternative schools. Key elements of successful alternative schools are autonomous small learning environments; increased educational engagement, possibly using a new curriculum and instructional techniques; and strong teacher input into school governance and curriculum. An examination of college-high school collaborations reveals their key attributes to be flexible educational pacing, broader curriculum options, and internships. A review of effective schools finds that common characteristics include a sense of community among students and teachers, a significant change in school curricula, and increased teacher involvement in the setting of curricula as well as other school reforms. Recommendations for the establishment of the NCS include small learning environments, curriculum and instructional reforms appropriate to the target students, ongoing professional development, consistent and constant counseling and monitoring, and frequent evaluation and assessment. An appendix presents features of selected alternative schools. (Contains 70 references.) (TD)

A course in advanced English as a second language that focused on the writing of formal research papers revealed that even students who had chosen personally interesting topics and were able to organize facts and present them well still had difficulty. They had problems beginning and ending their papers, they approached their topics warily, and they either used very abrupt conclusions or lingered too long. Some suggestions for a better approach are the following: pay more attention to students' specific questions about the paper's length and contents, using a recipe-like assignment; reduce the pressure of the syllabus to allow more time for thinking, research, and organization of a smaller number of papers; provide more practice of research techniques that produce readable, useful research papers; have students choose research topics early in the course and refine them as the course progresses; eliminate oral reports on papers in progress; have some students distribute their papers for group revision each week; examine, in class, the writing contained in some of the sources; have students practice note-taking; use more praise; eliminate all required reading assignments; and limit the papers' bibliographies to five sources. (MSE)

Abstracts of papers accepted for presentation in the Research Consortium sessions of the 1988 American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, are published in this volume. Abstracts of presentations made in the symposia are presented first, followed by those in the free communication sessions, and finally those in the poster sessions. The presider for each session is listed in the table of contents. The date and time of presentation are listed in the lower left hand corner of each abstract. (Author/JD)

Peer evaluation research was reviewed from three major perspectives--validity, methodology, and situational factors. Most of the studies focused on either concurrent or predicitve validity in a military training situation. Evaluation criteria included leadership potential, promotion potential, personality traits, and supervisory skills. Substantial validity was generally found, with correlation coefficients in the .30 to .50 range. Reliability and validity of different evaluation methods (rating, ranking, nominations, and combinations of these techniques) did not vary substantially. Evaluation methods did, however, differ in feasibility and acceptability, the latter largely a function of familiarity with the evaluation procedure and perceived difficulty. Situational factors have documented and potential effects which developers and users of peer evaluation should recognize. These factors include group size, informal group structure, demographic characteristics, group boundaries, hierarchical characteristics, friendship, length of association, and types of interaction. Although many issues surrounding peer evaluation or associate evaluation remain unresolved, evidence suggests they are a powerful tool in discriminating complex human behavior. (Author/CP)

A collection of working papers on English as a second language (ESL) instruction includes: "A Structured Approach to Teaching Composition" (Margery Tegey); "Teaching Writing' to ESL Students: A Process-Based Approach" (Marie Nelson); "When Theory and Intuition Meet: An Approach to Composition Instruction" (Ali A. Aghbar, Kathy Trump); "Shakespeare Made Simple" (Susan English); "The Mainstream English Language Training Project" (Tim Riney); "Play On Words: Teaching Sentence Expansion and Modification by Computer" (Roberta Boss); "Job Satisfaction Among ESL Teachers in Higher Education: A Preliminary Study" (Lois Lanier); and "The Problem with Formal Research Papers" (Dona De Sanctis). (MSE)

This paper describes an experimental course that modeled a teamed approach in preparing future school leaders centered on teacher professional development. Participants included representatives from the key stakeholder groups in teacher professional development (beginning and experienced teachers, future teacher educators, and future administrators). The course engaged participants in modeling the collaborative problem solving that is evident in schools which function as true learning organizations. Data collection included field notes, wall charts, and daily discussion from the course. The paper describes course design and history; articulates processes used to facilitate class planning and problem solving discussions; presents the group's ideas for redesigning professional development practices for teachers; and summarizes the implications of this kind of experience for improving preparation and professional development programs for teachers and administrators. Results of the study suggest that administrators cannot assume student teachers receive all the information necessary to teach, and lifelong learning is essential for teachers to remain vital and effective across their careers. Administrators are critical catalysts in ensuring a rich learning environment for teachers in the schools. Effective education must occur in an environment based on mutual trust, respect, and sense of community. (Contains 30 references.) (SM)

Articles extolling service-learning's benefits and discussing ways to use the pedagogy in the form of projects with organizations in the community are on the rise in the fields of composition and business/technical writing. One educator's classroom experiences with service-learning have shown students make important educational gains in such programs. This paper defines service-learning and stresses its relevance to the field of English studies. It argues that both the learning and the service should be emphasized as part of an educator's civic obligation to students and society, an obligation often embedded in an institution's mission statement. It states that, exploiting tensions at the hyphen between service and learning, organizations and clients, workplace preparation and civic literacy, suggests strategies that will prepare students for the work they will do when they graduate and enable them to have a positive impact on the communities in which they will live. Further, it states that with these strategies writing can be used to build bridges between theory and practice and between Education and the workplace/community, thus enabling students to appreciate and enact their civic responsibilities as rhetoricians. The major project in the courses discussed in the paper is a collaborative one involving an organization in the community in which students begin by drafting a bid proposal outlining the organization's needs and the means to meet those needs. The paper concludes that for service-learning to succeed, it must be reciprocal, involve reflection, and emphasize accomplishment of task, collaboration, and learning (problem solving is a key element). A sample bid proposal is appended. (Contains 50 references.) (NKA)

The researchers are developing a learning environment in the subject area of statics that includes physical models, interactive multimedia, traditional pencil-and-paper activities, and cooperative learning in the framework of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). They are using Authorware Professional to construct the multimedia program. The researchers taught a section of statics in this format, which now includes topics from mechanics of materials, for the third time in the fall of 1997 to students in architecture. This paper describes briefly the learning environment (Holzer and Andruet, 1998) and illustrates how students are guided to learn about trusses. Twenty-three figures from the multimedia program make up the majority of the document. (Author/SAH)

This paper asserts that through foundations courses in teacher education programs, all preservice teachers, not only social studies teachers, should come to understand the concept of cultural influence through an examination of the philosophical, ideological, and historical past. This paper examines the subject-matter content, authentic assessment instruments, and qualitative methodological assignments in two teacher educator, foundations of education classes, experienced over a 2-year period in both a college and university setting. The findings show that most preservice teachers in these foundations courses came to understand the relationship between theory and practice through an approach to content that focused on the milieu of the philosophers and educational theorists and the experience of using qualitative methodology and other authentic assessment designs. Curriculum and assessment models are offered for Randolph Macon Woman's College (Virginia) and Auburn University at Montgomery (Alabama). An analysis of authentic assessment assignments used in this study concludes the paper. (Contains 23 references.) (EH)

This study involved searching all articles published in the last 25 years in both research and professional journals to investigate best practices of cooperating physical education teachers in the United States. The paper focuses on 38 articles related to cooperating teachers and the student teaching experience. Results show that student teachers need to be placed in an environment conducive to their development. They also need the support of cooperating teachers who are knowledgeable about the current curriculum content of physical education, have a good program, and are able to provide appropriate feedback to student teachers through the use of supervisory tools. Good cooperating teachers must also be able to provide student teachers with the emotional support they need. The literature supports the idea of training cooperating teachers as supervisors to provide student teachers with the best support. There is a lack of knowledge regarding the type of curriculum cooperating teachers use in the gymnasium and its impact on student teachers. Also, though many studies mention the importance of using supervisory tools to provide objective data, few discuss how cooperating teachers use this information and its impact on student teacher training. (Contains 24 references.) (SM)

This paper reports on an action research study on the use of reflective practice by a teacher educator. It highlights how the teacher educator co-constructed knowledge with a doctoral student within reflective environments, examining teaching practices, and analyzed dialogic perspectives. Using journals as a primary means of reflection allowed the teacher educator to determine her own focus and what she wanted to understand. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the effects of self-reflection on the teacher educator as learner. At issue were recursive versus linear curriculum and elementary versus secondary experiential backgrounds. The secondary goal was to examine the results of teaching the same or similar material in multiple ways and how such variation has an impact on different learners. The results indicated that both teachers (pre- and inservice) and the teacher educator gained. The primary benefit for the teacher educator was a deeper understanding of her own teaching style and ultimately, greater effectiveness as an educator. The teachers rated the course highly, remarking that they felt extremely well prepared to teach in today's foreign/second language classrooms. The original syllabus is appended. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/SM)

Recently, the nature of science has enjoyed renewed attention in science education circles as a primary component of scientific literacy. This paper describes an investigation meant to assess the influence of a person's understanding of the nature of science on his or her decision-making regarding science- and technology-based issues, and to delineate the factors and reasoning people use when making these types of decisions. The decision-making processes of a group of college professors and a group of research scientists who held disparate understandings of the nature of science were examined. Results indicate that there were few differences in the factors influencing the two groups' decisions on complex, controversial science- and technology-based issues, and factors associated with the nature of science played an insignificant role for a minority of the respondents and no clear role for the majority. The questionnaires and responses are appended. (Contains 45 references.) (WRM)

This study utilized collaborative group action research to investigate the effective use of mentoring teacher programs. The research group consisted of a new content area teacher, a transferring teacher from a different state, and a university researcher. The group met initially to finalize the research question, which addressed how they could make effective use of their mentoring program, then held meetings regularly throughout the study. Individual and group meetings were audiotaped, and participants kept journals. The researchers collected baseline data on current mentoring programs, teachers' attitudes, and future plans. They talked to other teachers and administrators about the current mentoring situations, then shared that information with the group. Teachers and mentors were assigned to one another, and mentors received training through a mentoring workshop. This paper describes participants' experiences in the mentoring program, including information from their journals. It concludes that the strategies and techniques established to maintain a positive mentoring experience for all participants were successful, and the program was very effective. The main concern about the program was the distance between the mentor and protege, since they were not in the same school. (Contains 16 references.) (SM)

This paper details the origins of the media comparison study methodology, its current use as an evaluation instrument in distance education, and recommendations for more stringent discrimination between research and evaluation in the field of distance learning. The following topics are discussed: (1) the history of research in instructional technology from 1968 to the present; (2) recent research in distance learning, including the difference between evaluation and research, and weaknesses in many instructional technology studies (e.g., failing to link the study to a robust theory, poor literature review, weak treatment implementation, measurement flaws, inadequate sample size, and poor analyses) that bias the research toward not finding a statistically significant difference; and (3) evaluation versus research in distance education, focusing on appropriate uses of media comparisons for distance program evaluation, as well as alternative methods and exemplary models. (Contains 55 references.) (MES)

This paper describes J. Rosengren's post-final assignment and M. Harmin's truth signs activity that were incorporated into a secondary science methods course for preservice teachers. The strength of the post-final assignment is that it is a strategy for extending student learning past the end of a course and even beyond the initial teaching license. The truth signs activity helps future teachers reflect on their core educational values. Appended are sample post-final assignments for science teaching methods and curriculum courses. (Contains 11 references.) (WRM)

This paper describes a project that examined the use of common case studies across undergraduate special education, psychology, sociology, and health sciences classes to promote a common understanding of the needs of students with learning and behavior problems and to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration among future school professionals. During the project, participating instructors met prior to the beginning of each quarter to determine which courses within the participating departments or programs offered the best "blend." The syllabi for the courses were reviewed to determine where in the quarter the case studies would be presented and participating instructors met again to share cases that might lend themselves to specific course objectives. Once the case was chosen, each instructor suggested additions and subtractions to provide enough information for their discipline-specific questions. When the case study was sufficiently multidimensional, each instructor contributed one discipline-specific question that students were required to address and presented the case to his or her class. In addition to answering discipline-relevant questions, students were given the opportunity to participate in cross-disciplinary, problem-solving meetings. Future project goals are identified and a post-collaboration evaluation form is attached. (Contains 17 references.) (CR)

Any discussion of educational transformation today should consider a community-oriented pedagogy. This paper describes the administrator-education curriculum at George Mason University's Institute for Educational Transformation, which was organized around the unifying theme of the "American Dream." The most important reason for doing this is that public education in the United States is often conceptualized or perceived as a vehicle for helping individuals and society fulfill their "American Dream." Students need to reflect on the interconnections among and between the "American Dream", public education, and democracy. The program brought in various community voices to initiate, facilitate, and/or strengthen an ongoing dialogue between teachers and representatives from the different segments of northern Virginia society. In addition, teachers in the program were required to walk through school neighborhoods and to conduct two indepth interviews with parents. Listening to community voices in the school-based master's program motivated teachers to engage in a critical dialogue with community leaders, parents, and youngsters. "Community Voices" engaged in dialogue during the 2-week intensive summer session included: "African American Voices"; "Youth Voices: Preventing Gang Activity"; "A Voice from Asia"; and a "Voice from Latin America." The experience also provided teachers with firsthand knowledge of these groups' concerns about education, their perceptions about schools, and the many alternative ways that exist to work together. This is particularly important in Arlington, Virginia, where teachers must deal with many unfamiliar social, cultural, and economic issues that have a tremendous effect on education. (LMI)

Graduate students often have difficulty understanding the concepts behind the various models of instructional design (ID). In order to help students in an introductory ID course come to a better understanding of the similarities and differences between various instructional models, the models were developed into dynamic computer graphics to use within a class setting. The projects described in this paper represent a series of steps taken to develop visual learning materials that enhance student understanding of the subject matter within the limited amount of class time available. Each represents a different approach to developing visually rich and interactive computer-based materials. Four projects are described in this paper in terms of topic selection, design features, lessons learned, and suggestions for improvement. The projects focus on: (1) concept clarity; (2) color coding; (3) aesthetics; and (4) shapes and textures. (AEF)