NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Physical Environment & Facilities

• 1999 Notable Books for a Global Society: A K-12 list
  Offers brief descriptions of 25 recent outstanding books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written for children in grades K-12 and published in 1998) chosen for the 1999 list of Notable Books for a Global Society. Notes that these books celebrate the diversity and common bonds of humanity.
• A Career Odyssey. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Career and Technical Education/International Vocational Education and Training Association (74th, San Diego, California, December 7-10, 2000). Business Education Division
  These six papers present sound research in business education. "Status of Full- and Part-Time Business Faculty at Two-Year College and Perceived Importance of Selected Professional Services" (Marcia A.
• A Computerized Screening Instrument of Language Learnability
  This article presents further analyses of a pilot study that examined the effectiveness of a computerized language screening instrument for 60 multicultural children (ages 7-8). Results suggest that because of its computerization and language learnability features, this innovative instrument may be an effective alternative to current screening procedures.
• Beyond Classroom-Based Early Field Experiences: Understanding an "Educative Practicum" in an Urban School and Community
  Examined the experiences of preservice teachers in an urban school and community-based early field experience (integrated with foundations of education and general methods courses). Data from observations, interviews, reflective writings, and focus groups highlighted five categories of student experience: deepening multicultural, eye-opening and transformational, masked multicultural, partially miseducative, and escaping experiences.
• Bridging Differences of Time, Place, and Culture Using Children's and Young Adult Literature
  Focuses on the use of children's and young adult literature in the social studies classroom, addressing the New York state standards at the third- to sixth-grade levels. Provides an annotated bibliography of books that can be utilized in areas, such as U.S.
• Building a New Life: The Role of the School in Supporting Refugee Children
  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.
• Building a new structure for school leadership.
  Presents a conundrum about school leaders: asked to assume responsibilities they are largely unequipped to assume. Charts a way out of this conundrum through an understanding of large scale instructional improvement.
• CAIS/ACSI 2001: Beyond the Web: Technologies, Knowledge and People
  Presents abstracts of papers presented at the 29th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) held in Quebec on May 27-29, 2001. Topics include: professional development; librarian/library roles; information technology uses; virtual libraries; information seeking behavior; literacy; information retrieval; multicultural education; information science; and knowledge management.
• Career and Academic Guidance for American Indian and Alaska Native Youth. ERIC Digest
  American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students strive to maintain their heritage while learning to be successful in the dominant culture. Although academic and career success are worthy goals, AI/AN students can pay a heavy price to achieve them.
• Carpet in Schools: Myth and Reality.
  Carpet can serve as a type of finish over concrete, improves the acoustical environment and helps build more conducive, personalized learning environment.
• Caught in the middle: District administrators' experiences in comprehensive school reform.
  Attempts to address a paradox of education reform – that both "more school autonomy and greater central office coordination are necessary" by both reviewing the literature on the district role in supporting school-based change and by drawing on data from an evaluation of the pseudonymous Riverside Public Schools' experience implementing comprehensive school reform.
• Challenges of conflicting school reforms: Effects of New American Schools in a high-poverty district.
  Book describes a two-year, mixed method study examining, first, the differences between classrooms of schools adopting New American Schools (NAS) designs and the classrooms of non-NAS campuses and, second, the relationships between classroom conditions and student achievement within a high-poverty, urban Texas school district.
• Children's and Young Adult Literature by Latino Writers: A Guide for Librarians, Teachers, Parents, and Students
  This guide is designed to help librarians, teachers, parents, and students learn and teach about Latinos and find appropriate reading materials by Latinos. The titles in the guide are in print and available for purchase as of the printing of this book.
• Children's Literature at the Turn of the Century: Toward a Political Economy of the Publishing Industry
  Outlines the beginnings of a political economy of the children's literature publishing industry. Focuses on the ways that changes in the ownership and structure of the industry are altering the underlying culture of the book publishing industry and concomitantly, the ways that books are conceived, commissioned, and marketed.
• Children's Literature Web Sites
  Presents annotations of approximately 80 web sites that range in coverage from idiosyncratic and focused to diverse and comprehensive metasites. Notes categories of sites include: children's literature web guides; trade book publisher web sites; author/illustrator sites (metasites and individual); book review sources and teaching ideas; web sites with a multicultural focus; and children's literature discussion groups on the web.
• Classroom Spaces That Work. Strategies for Teachers Series.
  Based on the responsive classroom approach, this guide for educators of kindergarten through grade 6 is designed to help teachers set up physical spaces that are conducive to effective learning and teaching.
• Creating school climates that prevent school violence.
  Explains sets of school wide value statements that provide a base of expectations for school behavior.
• Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet: Lessons from the Field.
  The CRitical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet describes resources that highlight institutional practices that have been instrumental in the creation of multicultural campus environments. These lessons from the field of multicultural education can help other institutions in developing and implementing policy.
• Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet: Multiculturalism and Faculty Development.
  One of the key areas in the creation of a multicultural environment on college campuses is faculty development. This CRitical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet focuses on faculty development as a key component of the multicultural campus environment.
• Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet: Multiculturalism and the Curriculum.
  This Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) Sheet focuses on resources that help infuse the college curriculum with a multicultural perspective. Creating a multicultural environment depends on many factors, but curriculum is an essential aspect of multiculturalism.
• Decent Facilities and Learning: Thirman A. Milner Elementary and Beyond.
  Reviews the research that relates building design and condition to learning and suggests strategies for reinvigorating the design process.
• Designing Safe Schools.
  Explores facility design techniques that schools can use to enhance security in the absence of built-in security systems.
• Electronic Resources for Selecting and Using Children's Literature
  This annotated list of electronic resources suggests materials for selecting and using children's literature. Highlights include children's classics, beginning reader lists, lists by genre and/or grade level, multicultural booklists, annual lists of noted children's literature, children's book awards, extending children's literature, book publishers, and additional sites.
• 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. (Contains 10 references.) (CR).
• Ethics in Rehabilitation Education and Research
  Reviews ethical issues that rehabilitation educators may face in meeting their everyday teaching and research responsibilities. Issues presented include dual relationships; selection of students; measurement of student competence; supervision of students; confidentiality concerning student information; faculty competence; multicultural issues; and the design, conduction, and publication of research.
• Faculty of Color in Teacher Education: A Multicultural Approach to Mentoring for Retention, 2000 and Beyond
  The challenge to teacher education created by today's changing demographics involves excellence and equity. The present hostile climate at colleges and universities for faculty of color requires a creative readjustment of the tenure and promotion process.
• From the capital to the classroom: Year 2 of the No Child Left Behind Act.
  Report from the Center on Education Policy describes the implementation and effects of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) during calendar year 2003, the second year of the Act's existence.
• From the Reviewers: Rethinking School Design.
  Discusses the impact current educational reforms and new teaching styles are having on school design and the themes and trends that are emerging in designs for 2001.
• Fulfilling the Promise of Access and Opportunity: Collaborative Community Colleges for the 21st Century. New Expeditions: Charting the Second Century of Community Colleges. Issues Paper No. 3
  This document is part of the New Expeditions series, published by the American Association of Community Colleges. Addressed specifically in this paper is the need for collaboration within and between community colleges if they are to fulfill their role as democratic agencies concerned with access and equity issues.
• Futures Thinking: Consideration of the Impact of Educational Change on Black and Minority Ethnic Achievement
  Discusses the potential of information and communications technology (ICT) and the World Wide Web to offer positive alternatives in contemporary British schools that are failing their black and minority group students. Describes the advantages of ICT and looks at future changes in the teaching profession and changes in the curriculum that will require knowledge of ICT.
• General Classroom Space. School Planning & Management
  Illustrates 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. Arrangements of classrooms as learning centers that foster a team atmosphere are stressed.
• Greening School Grounds: Creating Habitats for Learning
  Schoolyard greening is an excellent way to promote hands-on, interdisciplinary learning about the environment through projects that benefit schools and increase green space and biodiversity in communities. This book features step-by-step instructions for numerous schoolyard projects from tree nurseries to school composting to native plant gardens, along with ideas for enhancing learning by addressing diverse student needs.
• Handbook of Children and the Media
  This handbook analyzes effects on children of traditional media, such as television, film, and advertising; and new media, such as the Internet and video games.
• High student achievement: How six school districts changed into high performance systems.
  Highlights six school districts – most of which enroll a large proportion of high-poverty and at-risk students – that posted impressive gains in student achievement. Data based on site visits and interviews.
• High-Performing Schools Serving Mexican American Students: What They Can Teach Us. ERIC Digest
  A study examined the characteristics of successful schools along the Texas-Mexico border, where high percentages of students were Mexican American, came from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and had limited English proficiency. Three elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools were selected on the basis of the following criteria: enrollment of at least 66.6 percent Mexican American students, above-average standardized test scores on the Texas state assessment system, and state or national recognition.
• Human Services and the Full Service School: The Need for Collaboration
  A full service school is one that meets the most basic needs of children and their families. This book discusses how these needs can be met within the school setting in order to produce the key desired outcomes of increased learning and easier teaching.
• Implementing Multicultural and Global Studies: Selected Resources about Materials and Their Uses by Teacher Educators, Inservice Providers, and K-12 Educators
  Presents an annotated bibliography that represents the varieties of materials which may be useful for those who plan, develop, and implement multicultural and global studies; infuse them throughout the curriculum; and strive to develop personnel with the attitudes and skills to collaborate and empathize with youth. (SM).
• Implementing NOVA's Group Crisis Intervention Model in Multicultural School Settings
  With the increasing diversity of the United States population, there is a growing awareness of the need for culturally specific responses to help survivors of disasters and violence. When school psychologists are called upon to intervene, they need to be able to link survivors to support systems.
• Improving Student Perceptions and Academic Performance in the Multiethnic Classroom
  Describes a study that examined the effects of collaborative group learning within a multiethnic classroom at the community college level. Confirms that when community college teachers utilize collaborative learning skills in conjunction with traditional learning skills, academic performance increases and student ethnic perceptions improve.
• Increasing Awareness and Implementation of Cultural Competence Principles in Health Professions Education
  Cultural competence is being recognized as an essential skill by allied health accrediting and professional organizations. However, more information is needed on the types and content of courses or other activities intended to explore cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity issues related to health care.
• International Education: Another View of Distance Learning
  This paper argues that diversity and flexibility have been the cornerstones of the community college over the last three or four decades. Of recent interest has been the change in the student profile from that of the recent local high school graduate to the returning student, as well as a mix of international students.
• Kaleidoscope: A Multicultural Booklist for Grades K-8. Third Edition. NCTE Bibliography Series
  The third edition of this annotated bibliography collection offers students, teachers, and librarians a helpful guide to the best multicultural literature (published between 1996 and 1998) for elementary and middle school readers.
• Legares v. Camdenton R-III School District
  The, Legares, court held that Missouri has a higher standard for special education services per state law, than is required by the "appropriateness" standard for IDEA. This decision was overturned by a statute passed months after the decision was rendered.
• 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 judgements or taking action. By instilling into children a basic set of rules enabling them to make appropriate judgements, teachers can help people rationally defend their beliefs, opinions, and behaviors.
• Major Trends and Issues in Early Childhood Education: Challenges, Controversies, and Insights. (Second Edition)
  Noting that understanding the contexts, continuities, and controversies of early childhood education is especially challenging because of the diversity in the field, this book provides a critical examination of the issues and controversies surrounding early childhood practices, policies, and professional development.
• Management and Motivation: An Analysis of Productivity in Education and the Workplace.
  Motivation as a form of business/human resource development can be tailored into greater productivity for teaching professionals with the development of a strong organization and a positive work environment.
• Mental Health in urban schools
  Many people hear the term mental health and they think mental illness. Others hear mental health in schools and they think it’s only about therapy and counseling.
• Multicultural Teacher Preparation: Establishing Safe Environments for Discussion of Diversity Issues
  Describes a project within an early childhood multicultural teacher education program that examined what makes educational environments conducive to discussing culturally sensitive issues. Diverse students participated in two discussions, created guidelines, and completed interviews and questionnaires.
• Multiculturalism: Moral and Educational Implications
  Considers multiculturalism as a moral issue. Notes scarcity of authentic multicultural classrooms and identifies four underlying factors.
• On Transition Services for Youth with Disabilities
  Since 1983, the successful transition of youth with disabilities from secondary schools to work, post secondary education, and adult roles has been a major national policy initiative.
  Download the doucment here.
• Pacific Resources for Education and Learning Fact Sheet.
  Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) is a nonprofit corporation that serves schools in 10 Pacific island political entities, whose affiliation with the United States ranges from statehood to free association. PREL's main office is in Honolulu, Hawaii, with service centers in American Samoa; the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap); Guam; the Republic of the Marshall Islands; and the Republic of Palau.
• Parting Words: Academic Librarians as a Model and Active Force for Social Responsibility on Campus
  Suggests ways in which academic librarians, as models of social responsibility, can work toward a more just campus community and society. These include care for users and fairness toward, awareness of language and culture, the provision of alternate sources of information, and the display of information on social responsibility.
• Partnerships to keep students healthy.
  Describes a model for a coordinated school health program included a healthy environment, comprehensive health education, physical education, health and nutrition services, counseling, staff health promotion, and family and community involvement.
• Physical Activity of Children With and Without Mental Retardation in Inclusive Recess Settings
  The purpose of this study was to compare physical activity levels of children with and without mental retardation. Thirty-four children were assessed in an inclusive recess setting and monitored for heart rate, activity counts and observational activity levels.
• Picture Books by Latino Writers: A Guide for Librarians, Teachers, Parents and Students
  This comprehensive guide includes background and publication information about picture books for children and adolescents by Latino authors, summaries of titles and bibliographical information on the authors, illustrators, and translators. The picture books suggested in the guide cover a variety of different subjects, including families, holidays, celebrations, animals, foods, libraries, homes, traditions, religious celebrations, and careers.
• Preparing Classroom Teachers for Delivering Health Instruction. ERIC Digest
  This digest examines the preparation of classroom teachers in health, noting what teachers should know to effectively provide school health education. Most states and school districts require some health education.
• Preparing Limited English Proficient Persons for the Workplace. ERIC Digest No. 215
  This digest describes cultural considerations and effective approaches for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals' workforce development, including the impact of recent training legislation. LEP persons often come from both a different language background and a very different cultural background; so English-language instruction must provide cultural and linguistic orientation.
• Preparing Teachers for Diversity: Lessons Learned from the U.S. and South Africa
  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.
• Quality and cost.
  Examines a mixed-methodology study of collaborative leadership using cost containment strategies.
• Race Equality Policies and Practice: Resources on the Internet, Summer 2002
  Presents resources available on the Internet that deal with racial equality policies and practice. Topics include legal requirements in education; institutional racism; community cohesion; diversity; curriculum; national identity; citizenship education; race and identity; suppliers, booksellers, and publishers; links with schools in other countries; refugee education; dealing with bullying and conflict; and language and bilingualism.
• School Choice and Social Justice
  This book presents a view of what constitutes social justice in education, arguing that justice requires that all children have a real opportunity to become autonomous people, and that the state use a criterion of educational equality for deploying educational resources.
• School principals as standards-based educational leaders: looking across policy contexts.
  Compared the work of principals/heads in two policy contexts. Context 1, standards for student performance were common and well-established, and authority was devolved to the school level for reshaping the school to meet those standards.
• Schools Fit for All
  In teacher-education programs, discussions of multiculturalism have been largely separate from those about inclusion of students with disabilities. Classrooms have always been heterogeneous.
• Selecting Books for the Elementary School Library Media Center: A Complete Guide
  This book focuses on the selection of books in an elementary school and on the resources designed to help in that process. Resources that support other aspects of collection development are identified, along with a number of established surveys of children's literature that discuss specific titles.
• Self-Awareness, Cultural Identity and Connectedness: Three Terms To (Re)Define in Anti-Bias Work
  Building a strong but flexible identity and learning to deal with diversity are two main educational goals for early childhood education. Because identity is replacing the older concept of race and is serving as the basis for a new form of segregation, it is necessary to redefine the terms "identity" and "cultural identity." Identity involves processes in continual flux, resulting in images of identity at a particular moment.
• Stories from the Edge: Doctors and Their Learning
  Biographical insights from general practitioners suggest that, for many, initial training was inadequate for work in marginalized, multicultural communities. A split between personal and academic ways of knowing evidences distrust of experiential and emotional learning, which are essential for effective medical practice.
• Student Diversity, Choice, and School Improvement
  This book examines research about trends affecting public school diversity, improvement, and choice. It finds that schools with socioeconomically and racially diversified student bodies are more effective learning communities than schools that are poverty-concentrated and racially homogenous; public school choice implemented via the controlled choice method of student assignment, with enrollment fairness guidelines for schools in student attendance zones consisting of pluralistic populations and several school sites equitably available to all zone residents, is the best way to achieve diversified student bodies; and whole school change with a focused curriculum for all is a more effective learning environment than magnet school attractor programs within schools that are not available to all students.
• Supporting school leaders.
  Describes and gives examples of administrative mentoring programs in schools in the United States and outlines benefits of the program for schools, administrators and superintendents.
• The Hunt for Democracy: The Lion's Perspective
  An art historian discusses the importance of developing a more inclusive globalized curriculum that includes perspectives of multiple cultures and develops a respect for the intricacies of human knowledge. Examples are from the author's art history classes at the University of the District of Columbia.
• The Linguistic Nature of Language and Communication
  Discusses five recent books about language that address issues that arise in classrooms with an increasing number of diverse dialects and varied home languages. Discusses the complexities of language, misunderstandings in the Ebonics controversy, socioeducational issues, and classroom ideas for teachers.
• The promise of urban schools.
  Discusses issues impacting urban schools with implications of policy change.
• Tribal Libraries: And Still They Rise
  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.
• Using Teaming, Active Learning, and Technology to Improve Instruction.
  Discusses the Technology Enhancing Achievement in Middle School (TEAMS) approach to classroom design, which incorporates interdisciplinary teams, active learning, and technology as an instructional tool.
• YA Spaces of Your Dreams: Welcome to the Reading Room: Lindbergh Middle School, North Long Beach, California
  Describes the transformation of the school library in Lindbergh Middle School, North Long Breach CA that serves a predominantly lower income, multicultural area whose students are struggling readers. Highlights include painting, new furniture, and other physical changes; collection development and circulation increases; hours of operation; staffing; and programming.