Ensuring Content‐Area Learning by Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities

Three factors tied with secondary student success in content‐area reading are demonstrated: (a) validated teacher‐focused and student‐focused interventions, (b) integrated and comprehensive service delivery systems, and (c) well‐designed, data‐based professional developmental programs. Difficult challenges face secondary students with LD and their teachers with regard to these students’ participation and success in required general education classes. Recently, instructional methods and materials have been developed and validated for promoting these students’ success. Some of them focus on how general education teachers plan and teach their content‐area courses; others focus on giving students the strategies they need to respond independently to the demands of their courses. This article describes these instructional methods, a service‐delivery model for implementing these interventions in secondary schools, and professional‐development mechanisms and administrative support that must be in place for the model to be maintained effectively.     

Staff development planning in an academic health sciences library.

OBJECTIVE: A staff development committee (SDC) was convened to implement staff development opportunities for an academic health sciences library system comprised of three separate facilities. The charge for the SDC was to: (1) develop programs to enhance workplace skills and personal growth, (2) communicate the availability of existing programs at the university and medical center, and (3) encourage the staff to participate in these opportunities. PROGRAM: The committee created goals and objectives and developed a survey designed to give staff the opportunity to provide input for this initiative. With an 80% response rate, the survey results were used to plan 15 events based on staff needs and preferences. First-year attendance for SDC-sponsored events was 459. Committee members served as liaisons for each event. Two forms were developed to facilitate event planning. A monthly announcement sheet, email reminders, and the library's local area network are used to communicate upcoming SDC events and encourage attendance. CONCLUSION: This approach can serve as a useful model for similar program planning in any organization.     

A model to explain information seeking behaviour by individuals in the response phase of a disaster

This Australian study establishes a model that provides a foundation for communication channels and tools selection by agencies in the post-warning response phase of a disaster. The model, developed from disaster and information seeking literature, attempts to predict information source and channel selection by people after their community has received a warning for a disaster. It provides the coding framework for analysis of 51 semi-structured interviews with disaster-affected Australians. The interviews tested the model for accommodation of channels and sources that people chose, found most useful, and used most in bushfire, slow flood, flash flood, and cyclone situations. The order of initial sources was investigated and preliminary information seeking pathways established across disaster types. The disaster information seeking model supports this investigation of information seeking behaviour, though improvements are suggested. The resulting model could guide agency response communication for different disaster types.     

Floating collection in an academic library: An audacious experiment that succeeded

Can a floating collection thrive in a large multicampus academic research library? Floating collections have been successful in public libraries for some time, but it is uncommon for academic libraries and unheard of for a large academic library system. This article will discuss the investigation into the feasibility of a floating collection at Penn State University Libraries, its implementation, and continuation for a period covering 2009 through 2015. Attaining the floating collection, limited to monographs in the general stacks of campus libraries, proved to be easier to implement than imagined and resulted in unintended benefits as well as some surprises.     

如何开展家长培训

残障儿童的父母．是孩子一生最好的教育者，因为他们在孩子成长的过程中无私奉献，恪尽责任。对那些有残障儿童的家庭而言．“知识就是力量”这句话就是真理。这些家长需要掌握关于残障症状的特点、教育治疗方案和策略等信息，以提升日常生活质量。家长们也想知道什么样的服务最适合孩子．如何获得这些服务．如何定位家长角色以确保孩子的进步．[第一段]