NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Physical Environment & Facilities

• General Classroom Space. School Planning & Management
  The author illustrated how a Utah school district created classroom learning environments in their elementary schools that prepared students for life-long learning by teaching them in a collaborative, interactive, hands-on way. They pointed out that arrangements of classrooms as learning centers that foster a team atmosphere.
• Creating school climates that prevent school violence
  The authors explained sets of school wide value statements that provide a base of expectations for school behavior. They discussed intervention options that help prevent violence in schools by affecting the school climate.
• Looking at the Evidence More Carefully: Achieving the Ideal?
  Schools could make a major contribution toward a racist-free society by stressing more emphatically the need for teachers and students to critically examine all the evidence before making judgments or taking action. By instilling into children a basic set of rules enabling them to make appropriate judgments, teachers can help people rationally defend their beliefs, opinions, and behaviors.
• The Linguistic Nature of Language and Communication
  The author discusses five recent books about language that address issues that arise in classrooms with an increasing number of diverse dialects and varied home languages. She discusses the complexities of language, misunderstandings in the Ebonics controversy, socioeducational issues, and classroom ideas for teachers.
• Building a New Life: The Role of the School in Supporting Refugee Children
  The author investigated refugee children's experiences adjusting to life in England. Interviews and surveys involving refugee and non-refugee children ranging from early to mid-adolescence provided data on: children, war, and persecution; flight to safety; early days in Britain; starting school; the importance of English; coping with the past; and providing support for parents.
• Preparing Teachers for Diversity: Lessons Learned from the U.S. and South Africa
  The author analyzed U.S. and South African teachers' discourses, investigating differences in development of commitment among teachers who engaged in talk-related activities within teacher education versus those who engaged in talk-related activities plus theory-enacting activities within diverse classrooms.
• Epilogue: Toward an Understanding of Literacy Issues in Multicultural School-Age Populations
  This epilogue to a forum on literacy issues in school-age children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds highlights research findings that address: the importance of home environment in influencing literacy; the relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy; and the use of dynamic assessment and process-dependent measures as alternative assessments.
• Tribal Libraries: And Still They Rise
  The author studied tribal libraries through visits to libraries in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. Tribal libraries serve as key information centers for the tribe's sovereign nation, and are almost always the education center of the community.
• Supporting school leaders.
  The authors described and gave examples of administrative mentoring programs in schools in the United States. They outlined benefits of the program for schools, administrators and superintendents.