Articles

Concerned about dating abuse among American teenagers, U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) held a Washington press conference this spring to announce national distribution of Love Is Not Abuse, a curriculum developed by EDC for Liz Claiborne, Inc. Created by EDC’s Christine Blaber, with input from educators and a national advisory board, the program helps ninth graders recognize, respond to, and seek help for their friends and peers who may be victims of abuse.

When describing the training program he has designed to prepare people to work as mentors for youth in the juvenile justice system, Joe Ippolito uses some expected terms, like support and nurture. But he is just as likely to lead with terms like challenge and agitate.

“In our business, injuries are not accidents and can often be prevented,” says EDC’s Chris Miara, associate director of the Children’s Safety Network (CSN), a national resource center for child and adolescent injury and violence prevention. For 15 years, CSN has assisted state and local agencies in building capacity to develop, implement, and evaluate their prevention efforts in such areas as motor vehicle, bicycle, and playground safety; poison and fire hazards; and child abuse and neglect.

When parents are involved in their children’s schooling, they can significantly increase students’ chances of graduating from high school and going on to college. Parent involvement is particularly important when a student would be the first in the family to enroll in college, and when poverty is a barrier.

A national initiative led by EDC’s Center for Science Education (CSE) and Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) in Berkeley, California, has recruited community program leaders across the country to help them implement high quality science and engineering activities in afterschool programs.

EDC’s initiative to decentralize and revitalize Indonesia’s schools by improving the quality of teaching has taken root in 535 schools and will ultimately include more than 2,000 schools in the world’s fourth most populous country.

Child laborers in Tanzania who participated in the non-formal, radio-based education program, Mambo Elimu, performed as well as students in the state-run public school system, according to recent exam scores from districts where Mambo Elimu was being piloted.

School violence, terrorism, and natural disasters are all crises that have the potential to affect school-aged children. With advanced planning, schools and communities can actively prepare to respond quickly to catastrophic events, and in many cases prevent them from ever happening. To help with this process, EDC’s National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention (NCMHPYVP) is working with its school- and community-based grantees to create the systems and infrastructure to prevent, prepare for, and respond to crisis situations.

“History is changing,” write Cornelia Brunner and Bill Tally in their new book, The New Media Literacy Handbook: An Educator’s Guide to Bringing New Media Into the Classroom. “Broadly stated, the change can be described as a shift from neat history to messy history. Neat history is characterized by a coherent, agreed-upon, linear narrative, and by delivery systems such as textbooks and lecture-and-slide presentations.

Dallas Farmer always dreamed of owning his own auto repair shop. He has a knack for taking things apart, figuring out how the pieces fit together, and making them work. But when he couldn’t read auto repair manuals, he couldn’t pass the tests he needed for certification. And when Farmer realized his reading problems were also interfering with his ability to help his kids with homework, he decided to take action.

On the third floor of Larsen Hall at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, thousands of video and audiocassettes line the walls of a room not much bigger than a closet. The cassettes contain data of an unusual sort—voices of children in ordinary conversation with each other and with adults at school, at play, and at home.

Online professional education for teachers and administrators has been a rapidly expanding industry over the past several years. Educators and districts across the country have been drawn to the convenience provided by online courses and workshops. But how effective are these courses, and what features determine the success of an online offering?

A dozen middle and high school teachers seated around a U-shaped table are scrutinizing stacks of papers spread out before them. The papers include a math problem that one of the teachers’ classes worked on the previous week, copies of student work on the problem, and a transcript of the classroom conversation among one group of students. EDC’s Mark Driscoll stands at the center of the U, leading the teachers through a careful analysis of the “artifacts” before them.

New educational methods inevitably set off debates among traditionalists and reformers. “Inquiry science” instruction provides a classic case in point.