Megan Wilson
Stories (32/0)
Gender Equity In Schools And The New Educational Leaders
To be a woman does not necessarily imply that one is disempowered. The basis for my analysis provides an opportunity to distinguish two components that have often been confused and confounded. With this challenge in mind, I scrutinized and probed educational management as a gendered construction.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
New Models Of Teaching And Learning
While parents and communities stress the importance of students having access to technology, it is a mistake to focus primarily on students. For the educational enterprise to adapt appropriately to our new world, we must invest in training teachers to integrate technology into the curriculum. School districts frequently use staff development opportunities to train their teachers to incorporate new technologies; this is a complex process. Traditional staff development training in technology involves a day's instruction, including hands-on experience with the software. Most of this training ignores the developmental process of adults--the need to understand relationships, to reinforce concepts with frequent use, to explore and be challenged, and to conceptualize an entirely different teaching methodology. Districts rarely have support staff available to help the teachers work through these innovations. The combination of reticence, frustration, and inadequate training threatens to sabotage the opportunities for technology to enhance classroom learning.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Maximize The Learning Of All Children
The information age poses a whole new set of challenges and questions to America's schools. The quality of our nation's political, social and economic future will depend on the ability of young people to become functioning members of society who understand how to access information and determine its significance, draw independent rational conclusions and communicate findings. A democracy requires contributing citizens who are informed and capable of independent, critical thought. Continual retraining is becoming the norm in American business, but are future employees prepared to contribute? Our society's preparation of young people for the workplace of the industrial age has been insufficient.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Excellence In Education As A National Priority
Learning is a complex process. We learn by building on past experiences; by trial and error; by starting with simple tasks and combining them over time to accomplish more complex tasks; and, by gaining insight and understanding of the relationship between various parts of a problem. Research demonstrates that for teaching to be effective, a learner must be able to create meaningful relevant patterns. The process of learning must be maintained within a context of appropriate and challenging standards.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Education Reform Continues To Top The List Of Issues Facing The Nation Today
Education reform continues to top the list of issues facing the nation today. Americans are better informed than ever about school performance and its implications for our future, and many feel a sense of urgency about improving their children's education. This urgency is leading to a shift in focus for education policy at all levels - federal, state and local. Many states and localities are enacting policies that put the needs of children and parents over systems, focus on improving student achievement rather than on processes and procedure and policies that empower communities, enterprising school leaders and teachers.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Time To Set High Academic Standards
For decades, political and business leaders have demanded education reform because bad schools were putting our nation "at risk" of losing its economic advantage. Many years, billions of dollars, and hundreds of reform strategies later, the schools survive largely untouched while America enjoys one of its greatest periods of prosperity in history. To some this is an enigma: how can we lead the world economically while trailing the world educationally? How will our economy fare when generations of poorly educated students comprise its workforce? Contrary to conventional wisdom, our schools do not exist just to train tomorrow's workforce. They exist, primarily, to produce a well-educated citizenry. Education in a democracy has many dimensions-civic, intellectual, economic, and moral, to name a few. As instructors teach literature, algebra, history, and physics, on a deeper level their schools are recreating American society. When they falter, our cultural legacy-even our civilization-is what is truly "at risk." That is why school success and pupil achievement matter-not just for the gross domestic product.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
The Expansion of School-Community Partnerships
Across the country, states and communities are mobilizing to focus attention on young children and families, and many benefits could accrue from an integration of community–school efforts with early childhood initiatives. Ample evidence from research supports such integration. Recent studies demonstrate the importance of early cognitive stimulation and early emotional development, development promoted by a nurturing, reciprocal relationship with a primary caregiver and reinforced by others. But for too many infants and toddlers, this relationship gets off to a poor start, with parents who, because of their own circumstances, place their children in jeopardy. To address this need for better early childhood programs, this paper explores ways to promote the expansion of school–community partnerships (S–CPs) into early childhood learning through maximizing federal policy and employing other new strategies.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Low Tuition Is in Very Deep Trouble
Equality of higher education opportunity is in very deep trouble in the United States today. Higher education opportunity is moving backward for those from the bottom quartile of family income, for African Americans, and for most Hispanics. Other groups that are in somewhat less but still serious trouble include the two middle family income quartiles, and males, as well students in many regions of the country affected by high prices but lacking adequate financial aid to finance college.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
How Compatible Is Urban School Reform With The Neighborhood Revitalization?
How compatible is urban school reform with the neighborhood revitalization thrust, and how can revitalization efforts in urban communities support the work of the public school? Three perspectives frame the movement toward coordinated children’s services: a new sense of "ecology" that school, family, and community are vitally interdependent; a recognition of the need to build the "social capital" of families and communities; and a call to end the extensive fragmentation in service delivery. The community revitalization approach focuses on family self-sufficiency and independence through employment, a renewed encouragement of private investment in urban communities, and a locally or grassroots-driven strategy of action.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Effective School Based Violence Prevention
In the area of violence prevention, the need for programs in schools and other institutions that work with youth has increased at a faster pace than the availability of solid evaluation research. Causes of school-related violence have been examined in numerous studies and there is evidence that prevention and early intervention efforts can reduce troubling behaviors in schools. Research-based practices can help school communities recognize the warning signs of violence, promote a positive school climate, and foster norms against violence.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
More Students Can Gain Access To College Education
The amount of time and effort students and parents put into planning, and how early they get started, are important factors in achieving access to postsecondary education. Schools play a key role in making planning resources, information and opportunities available and accessible. Educators believe that students should start post-high school planning in ninth grade or even earlier, but relatively few students report starting earlier than 10th grade.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education
Give Students The Experience Of Making A Difference
The attraction and promise of social and emotional learning (SEL) is that it’s a unifying concept for coordinating school, family, and community partnerships for drug and violence prevention, positive youth development, health promotion, character education, and service-learning. If you think about effective SEL programming, the goal is to make sure that it is integrated explicitly with academic instruction, coordinated with health promotion efforts and also connected to citizenship efforts. The goal of education is to educate knowledgeable, responsible, respectful, healthy, and caring students.
By Megan Wilson3 years ago in Education