The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a self-management procedure known as WATCH that was designed to teach adolescents with learning and behavior problems to improve the completeness, accuracy, and neatness of their creative writing homework assignments. The procedure was based on four strategies: teaching students the fundamentals of behavior change, teaching students to use self-instruction, teaching students to set goals and implement plans to achieve those goals, and teaching students to accurately evaluate their work. Two high school students who were classified as behaviorally disordered were taught to develop plans for completing their creative writing homework assignments, and to evaluate the completeness, accuracy, and neatness of their assignments. A multiple baseline design across students was used to determine if improvements in the completeness, accuracy, and neatness of homework assignments were associated with the use of the procedure. Data show that the completeness, accuracy, and neatness of creative writing assignments increased for both students following training in the use of the WATCH procedure.

Being able to collaborate effectively is important for teachers who work together to serve students with learning disabilities in general education classrooms. Effective collaboration requires that teachers have knowledge and skills in how to effectively communicate and share their technical expertise for the purpose of solving classroom problems and providing continuity across instructional settings. Although both special education and general education preparation programs provide preservice teachers with the technical expertise for their respective areas of certification, few programs provide both special education and general education majors with instruction in interpersonal communication skills and collaboration strategies. The purpose of this article is to suggest guidelines and strategies to help teacher preparation programs move toward collaboration instruction for all educators. Suggestions for what to teach and how to teach it are offered, as well as an overview of factors that influence the implementation of collaboration instruction for all educators.

The purposes of this survey were to determine the extent to which resource room teachers use strategies that promote the success of handicapped students in regular classrooms and to identify variables that may affect the successful implementation of those strategies. Teachers were asked to indicate the extent to which they currently use 19 strategies that have been associated in the literature with promoting the success of handicapped students in regular classrooms. Common barriers to effective service delivery were also identified, and teachers were asked to indicate the extent to which each posed a problem in their school. Teachers reported only moderate use of the strategies included in this survey, but attached a higher degree of importance to their use. The findings from this survey suggest that resource room teachers need more training in the use of strategies that promote the success of handicapped students in regular classrooms, and more time to implement them in the way that the results of this study suggest that they would like to.

Reinforcing and facilitating learning communities is a strategy that has been used to decrease attrition rates in traditional campus-based programs, and it has been hypothesized that applying principles of learning communides in distance education programs could have similar positive outcomes. To facilitate the development and maintenance of regional learning communities within the Mild/Moderate Distance Degree and Licensure Program at Utah State University, highly successful graduates of the program are employed as mentors within each broadcast locality to engineer regional opportunides for studying and socializadon. Program evaluadon respondents indicate that mentoring experiences were very helpful as they progressed through the courses and pracdca. Moreover, graduadon rates increased from 53% to 75% since the inception of this approach.

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