School Governors: conceptual and practical problems

ABSTRACT The new role of school governor poses questions about the proper conduct of these new authorities in regard to the professional work of schools. Schools have unique purposes and for that reason metaphors for their governors' conduct from commerce and from democratic decision-making have important limitations as well as some strengths. Schools need to account for their use of public funds, but they are not institutions whose main purpose is profit. They need to respect the popular will, but this cannot mean the handover of all professional functions to governors. The distinction between management and governance is considered and it is suggested that the jury might be a more appropriate model for school governors' activity.     

Admissions Policies for Graduate Programs in Counselor Education

A survey was conducted of a random sample of 100 counselor education programs with regard to their policies and procedures for admission of graduate students. The 68 usable responses also provided data on the number of students admitted to each degree program as well as size of faculty in 1965 and 1970. The results indicate a heavy emphasis on predictors of academic success as initial screening criteria, with a wide variety of other criteria considered. Most programs reported the use of different levels of administration in making admissions decisions, with the majority utilizing a departmental committee as one level.     

School Counselors' Perceptions of Training Needs in Multicultural Counseling

Ratings by practicing school counselors' of their needs for training in multicultural counseling indicated that additional training is most needed to promote students' academic achievement and to enhance counselors' cross-cultural communication and racism awareness. Curricular implications are discussed.     

The foundations and assumptions of technology-enhanced student-centered learning environments

Direct instruction approaches, as well as the design processes that support them, have been criticized for failing to reflect contemporary research and theory in teaching, learning, and technology. Learning systems are needed that encourage divergent reasoning, problem solving, and critical thinking. Student-centered learning environments have been touted as a means to support such processes. With the emergence of technology, many barriers to implementing innovative alternatives may be overcome. The purposes of this paper are to review and critically analyze research and theory related to technology-enhanced student-centered learning environments and to identify their foundations and assumptions.     

Using Action Research to Enhance Teaching and Learning at the University of Technology,Jamaica

As part of its quality assurance systems, the University of Technology, Jamaica initiated a project aimed at exploring how action research could be used as a vehicle for enhancing the quality of the teaching/learning process. Following a series of orientation sessions and the development of a handbook for project teams, five action research projects were undertaken in the second semester of the academic year 2001-2002. The projects focused on using a student-centred approach in traditionally teacher-centred courses. At the end of the project cycle, results indicated that students became more independent learners and instructors had learned much about student-centred classroom strategies.     

Relationships Between Dimensions of Supervisors' Influence and Counselor Trainees' Performance

Practicum supervisors' expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness were related to supervision outcome measures. Trustworthiness proved to have the strongest associations.     

Comparative Perceptions of Practicum Counselor Behavior

Nineteen counseling interviews were rated by the respective clients, counselors, and supervisors on the Counselor Rating Form; these ratings of perceived counselor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness were compared in a repeated measures analysis of variance. Results indicated that all three sources of perceptions were similar, although counselors rated their own behavior as significantly less expert than their clients. The article discusses the results in terms of their relevance to counselor supervision and training.     

Comparative Effects of Teaching Basic Counseling Competencies Through Brief Microskills Practice Versus Mental Practice

Students enrolled in an introductory counselor education course who lacked training and experience as interviewers were randomly assigned to one of two short-term attending and responding skills training groups or a wait-control (WC) group. Brief microskills practice (MS) and mental practice (MP) training methods were used in the two treatment groups. All students conducted posttraining simulated counseling interviews, and their videotapes provided data for analysis of the quality of their interview competence and their proficiency with attending and responding skills. MANOVA and follow-up analyses of data from independent ratings of the videotapes indicated that MS was superior to MP and WC on attending skills, MP led to superior performance on responding skills, and neither MP nor MS led to significant differences in perceived competence on qualitative dimensions.     

Toward Improving Student Learning: Policy issues and design structures in course-level outcomes assessment

Conscientious instructors at all levels are constantly making decisions about how to improve their teaching. This is a natural, intuitive part of being a good instructor, but even faculty who value student learning and work hard to improve their teaching can fail to make the connection between what they do in the classroom and the continuous improvement philosophy of outcomes assessment. The connection can be missed because understanding course-level outcomes assessment requires understanding evaluation policies and structures that differ markedly from those employed for unit-level program accreditation. The purposes of this paper are two-fold: first, to address policy issues that impede adoption of systematic, course-level outcomes assessment for improving student learning; and second, to describe a design structure for applying outcomes assessment that addresses factors under control of the instructor that affect students' learning. The paper concludes with observations on the crossed purposes of collecting information for judging faculty merit in the annual review process as opposed to collecting information for course improvement in the outcomes assessment process.