A Guide to Increasing Motivation, Autonomy, and Achievement
Evidence shows that involving students in the curricular decision-making process contributes to improvements in student autonomy and self-regulation, discipline, motivation and overall educational success. Drawing on the author's experience, this step-by-step guide will help teachers to plan and implement this innovative teaching model.
A constructivist leader facilitates professional dialogue and inquiry to enable all teachers to make sense of their work together and to reconstruct the major purposes of schooling. Illustrating their work with vignettes of the activities of such leaders, the authors of this book create a clear picture of constructivist teaching and leadership. They also formulate strategies for altering the school culture to accommodate constructivist leadership.
At a time of increasingly curtailed school budgets, this book identifies potential funding sources for schools in the United States faced with the challenge of securing money from outside agencies to support innovative educational programmes. The authors also offer useful advice to teachers and administrators involved in each stage of the grantwriting process.
The progress of a complex educational restructuring project in the US state of Arizona is the focus of this book. The goals of the project included: to improve dramatically student achievement in the core subjects; to develop new assessment and evaluation practices; and to develop teaching strategies, curricula and school structures that meet the needs of poor, minority and bilingual students.
This book is concerned with the conflict in United States schools between principals and teachers over teacher supervision. Many teachers are unhappy, regarding classroom supervision as a meaningless and intrusive ritual where all teachers - regardless of experience and competence - receive the same superficial treatment. The solution advocated by the authors includes a more individualized, less clinical form of supervision which draws upon the best of current research on teaching and team leadership.
Written from extensive experience, this book describes the author's perceptions of the role of the educational superintendent in the United States. Richard C Wallace Jr conveys an image of an educational director who provides vision-based leadership to improve the quality of education for students and the quality of performance of teachers and administrators.
This book is concerned with the conflict in United States schools between principals and teachers over teacher supervision. Many teachers are unhappy, regarding classroom supervision as a meaningless and intrusive ritual where all teachers - regardless of experience and competence - receive the same superficial treatment. The solution advocated by the authors includes a more individualized, less clinical form of supervision which draws upon the best of current research on teaching and team leadership.
Using a combination of participant observation and interviews with teachers, parents and students, Rosetta Marantz Cohen explores a high school's efforts in the United States to implement broad-based curricular change. The book vividly illustrates the impact of change on an often resistant institution. From her observations, Cohen draws up a series of recommendations for those considering embarking on similar site-based reform initiatives.
Despite the many `alternative' schools and programmes in the United States designed to redirect the lives of at-risk youth, the majority of these in fact serve to isolate and segregate. This challenging book presents a comprehensive plan for those interested in creating truly alternative educational programmes for this group. John Kellmayer outlines the key characteristics of alternative programmes, describes alternative models and explains how to implement and manage these programmes. He also provides strategies on how to empower teachers, involve students in their own education and evaluate alternative programmes.