The VIA Book. A Best Practices Manual from the Vocational Integration with Academics Project at the Rindge School of Technical Arts.

This book suggests strategies for creating meaningful project and work-based learning experiences that were developed by teams of vocational and academic teachers and addresses the support issues necessary to sustain successful efforts. It begins with a description of the design team model and activities of the Vocational Integration with Academics (VIA) Project in Years 1 and 2. It lists the five principles of academic and vocational integration that form the framework within which the design teams went about their work of creating VIA projects and curriculum units. The main body of the manual consists of the seven best practices for academic-vocational integration that form the cornerstone of the VIA Project's work on integration. The strategies shape the organization of the manual, with one to four appropriate VIA curriculum examples used as illustrators for each strategy. Each curriculum example may contain some or all of these components: description of units or themes; course summary; curriculum outline; and examples of group projects. The seven integration strategies are as follows: (1) a drive for authenticity; (2) students as producers of knowledge; (3) building transferable skills; (4) technology education for science; (5) doing well and doing good; (6) work as context; and (7) self-determined learning. An appendix contains addresses and telephone numbers of contact people for projects, programs, and curricula highlighted in the manual. (YLB)