Numerous methods are available to assess physical activity (PA) but systematic observation (SO) excels in being able to provide contextually rich data on the setting in which the activity occurs. As SO is particularly useful for determining how activity is influenced by the immediate physical and social environments, its use is becoming more…

The prevailing assumption by some that deep processing promotes stronger learning outcomes while surface processing promotes weaker learning outcomes has been called into question by the inconsistency and ambiguity of results in investigations of the relation between levels of processing and performance. The purpose of this literature review is to…

In this article, we share findings from our process of "reading the past, writing the future" of elementary research in NCTE's journals. Our analysis focused on major domains of the field, including literature, writing, reading, language, and multimodal literacies, and spanned "Elementary English Review", which first appeared in 1924, was renamed…

The current article reviews the literature on school refusal behavior. Definitional inconsistencies, the effects of biased assessment processes, and the consequences of the lack of ethnic, racial, and economic diversity in school refusal research samples are highlighted. An increase in the use of low-income, ethnic minority, community samples in…

Although a large body of research has investigated the possibility of motivational or attitudinal differences in men and women that would explain observable differences in levels of achievement, much of this research has failed to produce results. The failure of researchers to consider the characteristics of their college-student samples may have…

Poverty rates are highest in the most urban and most rural areas of the United States, and are higher in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan areas. Yet, perhaps because only one-fifth of the nation's 35 million poor people live in nonmetropolitan areas, rural poverty has received less attention than urban poverty from both policymakers and…

Working memory is where we "think" as we learn. A notion that emerges as a synthesis from several threads in the research literatures of cognition, motivation, and connectionism is that motivation in learning is the process whereby working memory resource allocation is instigated and sustained. This paper reviews much literature on motivation and…

Given what is known about cognitive development, how well prepared are 4-year-old children to succeed in school? This paper addresses the question by describing three areas in cognitive development, highlighting major themes in the research, and suggesting implications for teaching practice and social policy. Classical and contemporary views of…

Reviews previous effective-schools research frameworks and examines underlying assumptions and methodological implications. Drawing on an Israeli study, argues that the modeling of school-effectiveness studies must be both multilevel and interactive. Achievement depends on the particular combination of a pupil's home background and general…

Reviews research focusing on teacher influence on student academic outcomes. Findings on both sides of the issue are discussed; reasons for the indeterminancy of findings are specified; and relationships between presage, context, process, and product classroom variables are discussed. (RH)

Sensitivity to context variables marks the third phase of effective schools research (ESR). The first phase was one of explicit concern for equity, challenging the works of Coleman and Jencks which suggested that achievement differences were more associated with family background than school variables. This research focused on low socioeconomic…

Argues that Herrnstein and Murray's cognitive stratification is not intrinsically ominous, since context determines its meaning; their "intelligence" data actually measures educational achievement; environmental effects are underestimated; and analyses and social policy recommendations are bound to the U.S. context. Concludes that…

This commentary on Enrique Gracia's (2003) article, "Social Isolation from Communities and Child Maltreatment: A Cross-Cultural Perspective," discusses the relationship of neighborhood context to child maltreatment. The difficulty of sorting out individual and contextual factors is emphasized, along with the problem of clearly defining the unit of…