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DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS
NCRVE's development activities bring NCRVE's work closer to points of
practice. Working face-to-face with practitioners, we facilitate change, learn
about the requirements for change, and then spread the word to other sites in
the next stage of readiness. As equal partners, NCRVE researchers and
practitioners jointly determine the design and together engineer, implement,
and document innovative activities. Development activities provide us with the
in-depth information the field demands for both implementation and the design
of policy that best enables change.
Our development sites and their work will provide answers to the "what is it,"
"how to do it" questions, formative data, and a process for identifying
additional issues and questions for further study. With this information we can
create and provide richly informed descriptions, evaluations, and strategies.
Ultimately, development activities will create success stories, will establish
exemplars of policy translation, and will develop a cadre of leading
practitioners.
A particular focus of the development work is to provide NCRVE with
opportunities to test, refine, clarify, and more deeply understand the reform
principles and ideas advocated and mandated in the 1990 Perkins Act and the
1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act. The central points are (1) integration
of vocational and academic curriculum, (2) combination of work-based with
school-based learning, and (3) creation of links between secondary and
postsecondary education.
We have established the following benchmarks to assess our success in meeting
this purpose. Through development activities we will
- deepen and expand our knowledge and vision of effective schools and
colleges, gathering more descriptive knowledge of programs as well as the
complex implementation processes involved in creation, institutionalization,
and replication.
- discover, through evaluation, the validity of our theories.
- synthesize our lessons from research, development, and training activities
and, therefore, improve our ability to serve the field by creating and
disseminating information that is more user-friendly.
To this end,
researchers and practitioners play a variety of roles in the development of
self-sustaining sites and the simultaneous study of reform. For researchers
this includes coaching, mentoring, planning, training, evaluating, and
developing local infrastructure. For practitioners, in addition to actual
innovation, the list includes defining questions and design, and documenting
change through data collection or journal writing. Equally important to
development is an iterative process, cycling repeatedly between design,
implementation, testing the design efficacy, and then redesigning once again.
Four different types of development activities are funded:
- Initiatives to form more intensive long-lasting relationships by creating
networks that will unite schools, colleges, and NCRVE as we all work toward
implementing key ideas articulated in the Perkins and School-to-Work Acts.
- Activities which add a development component to NCRVE research projects.
- Projects that improve NCRVE's capacity to respond to requests from the
field for assistance in implementing the Perkins and School-to-Work
Opportunities Acts.
- Activities to collaborate with other organizations such as the Office of
Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) and state departments of education to
discover answers to pressing questions from the field.
| Project
Directors:
|
George
H. Copa and William Ammentorp, University of Minnesota (Year 3 of 3)
|
Keywords:
|
community
colleges; model development: community college design; educational planning;
professional development; partnerships; futures; exemplary programs; technical
assistance: curriculum/program improvement
|
The purpose of this project is to continue the research, development,
dissemination, training, and implementation of new designs for the two-year
institution of higher education developed over the past two years. This project
will help ensure that New Designs and other related NCRVE efforts continue to
expand their impact on systemic postsecondary educational reform across the
United States. The project will be particularly effective in presenting a
future vision for the leadership and direction of postsecondary education,
including vocational technical education.
1997 activities are focused on bringing the project to culmination,
integrating the project with other NCRVE initiatives, and providing continuity
in service to the field after 1997. The major project efforts during 1997 will
include the following activities:
- Publishing an executive summary of New Designs concepts in paper
and electronic format.
- Developing a description of benchmark practices. Written case
studies and, where feasible and appropriate, short videotapes of reasonable
quality will be used as the medium for the descriptions.
- Disseminating new designs for the two-year institution through
conferences, meetings, and workshops held by other groups and agencies.
- Providing direct technical assistance to institutions wishing to
implement new designs for the two-year institution.
- Holding an institute for postsecondary institutions interested in
in-depth exploration and implementation of New Designs concepts and
specifications.
- Forming partnerships with other individuals, organizations, and
agencies who have expertise related to improving and expanding on the design
process and implementation of New Designs to ensure continuation of technical
assistance to the field.
- Preparing a manuscript for a book which will describe the New
Designs concepts and the benchmark case studies.
- Assisting in developing a vision for vocational education, and
education more generally, in the two-year institutions of higher education,
through collaboration with Project RII.5.
Project
Director:
|
Erika
Nielsen Andrew, University of California at Berkeley (Year 5 of 5)
|
Keywords:
|
network
development; curriculum integration; school to work; Tech Prep; echnical
assistance: curriculum/program improvement; urban schools; educational reform
|
The purpose of this project is to assist the Urban Schools Network teams
engaged in the implementation of school-to-career programs. To this end, the
relationship between the teams and NCRVE is guided by the Agreement for Program
Improvement, a document built around the three core integrations: (1)
vocational and academic education, (2) school-based and work-based activities,
and (3) secondary and postsecondary institutions.
In the final year of the grant, we will work to ensure team longevity and
institutionalization. To do so, we will involve significantly more educators
within the networking schools, districts, and states, and we will develop
further collaboration with other organizations sharing a similar purpose.
In the analysis of our efforts to date, two primary issues have surfaced
leading to our current systemic focus:
- Full-School Redesign. The ideas embodied in Tech Prep, integration,
and school-to-work call for nothing less than full school redesign. In addition
to understanding new ways of thinking about education, these reforms require
practitioners to reconsider ways of working together both as colleagues and
with the community at large.
Our response is to work more intensely in
the sites. We propose three ways of doing this: (1) we will encourage teams to
expand their efforts to a schoolwide focus, (2) we will help to develop the
school-districtwide infrastructure necessary to support the school teams, and
(3) we will supply more technical assistance through fellows and field
consultants. Taken together, we will improve our efforts to work more broadly
and deeply with sites.
- Comprehensive Evaluation. The use of data collection and evaluation
serves both a summative purpose as well as serving as an important tool for
both problem solving and advancing school change. We will teach teams about
data collection and school improvement methods.
In order to continue to
meet schools' needs and inform policy, NCRVE will document their progress
carefully, feeding back into the network and policy circles stories of
institutional progress. Our careful documentation will also be helpful to
school as a marketing tool to demonstrate what works.
Given the above, we
are planning to engage the Network in the following:
- Network Meetings. A national network meeting will be hosted in Fall
1997.
- On-Site Visits. In 1997, we will continue to provide on-site
assistance by fellows and field consultants related to team goals with an eye
on systemic thinking, broadening and linking up team efforts to a larger
institutional purpose. Team managers and the program improvement coordinator
will join fellows on-site to gather data about program improvement efforts, and
to collect information about the five-year history of implementation and
association with NCRVE.
- Network Collaborations and On-Site Institutes. In keeping
with our systemic focus, NCRVE will serve as a co-sponsor of other
organizations' events, encouraging team participation in these activities. In
addition, we will also help teams sponsor their own summer institutes
on-site.
- Network Book. The teams essentially have created four, one-year
plans rather than a multiyear vision. NCRVE will weave these five years of
implementation history into a publication, which will discuss common themes as
well as lessons learned.
Project
Director:
|
David
Stern, University of California at Berkeley (Year 1 of 1)
|
Keywords:
|
educational
reform; curriculum integration partnership; technical assistance:
curriculum/program improvement; echnical assistance: partnerships; technical
assistance: school to work issues
|
The primary activity of NCRVE's field consultants is to support the work of the
Urban Schools Network (Project DII.3). In addition, field consultants will
provide technical assistance to other high schools and school districts working
on school-to-career issues. One planned activity is assisting schools that are
attempting to become members of the Hewlett/Annenberg-sponsored Bay Area School
Reform Collaborative (BASRC). Assistance will take place in areas such as
creating systems to support schoolwide change (e.g., policy issues, team
building, strategic planning); building and sustaining partnerships with
business, the community, and postsecondary institutions; and developing
integrated curriculum that serves to increase academic achievement for all
students.
Project Director:
|
David
Stern, University of California at Berkeley (Year 1 of 1)
|
Keywords:
|
entrepreneurship
education; school-based enterprise; curriculum integration
|
In 1996, an allocation was set aside to support activities that were
initiated by requests from the field, either by practitioners or policymakers.
Most of the 1996 allocation was spent on the conference School-to-Work:
Preparing Students for College and Careers held at the State University of
New York, Purchase Campus; and on the School-Based Enterprise (SBE) Technical
Assistance Project with the Oakland (CA) Unified School District. In 1997, an
allocation will be set aside to continue work on the SBE project, and like
activities.
In 1997, the Oakland SBE project will continue to provide ongoing guidance to
teachers and administrators developing enterprise initiatives in career
academies. This is an innovative effort to develop SBEs that support an
integrated vocational-academic curriculum. The Oakland initiative has entered
its second year of operations, expanding to six career academies. After NCRVE's
summer teacher training workshop, teachers requested follow-up assistance in
several areas (e.g., identifying ways enterprise development can enhance core
curricular objectives). In addition to conducting individual site visits, NCRVE
will hold several workshops to reflect on progress made during the fall, to
facilitate discussion and information sharing among teachers, and to provide
follow up training on entrepreneurship curriculum. As with all field initiated
activities, this effort will conclude with a written report.
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