The purpose of this study was to describe secondary pre-service teachers' past reading experiences, present attitudes and beliefs about reading, their attitudes and beliefs about a required content area literacy course, and their predicted use of reading in future instruction. Secondary pre-service teachers (N = 124) of diverse subject areas…

Reports from research and the larger educational community demonstrate that too many students have limited ability to comprehend texts. The research reported here involved a two-year study in which standardized comprehension instruction for representations of two major approaches was designed and implemented. The effectiveness of the two…

Students in every nation of the world learn new and difficult material in ways that are often similar and, at the same time, different from the way other students of the same age, gender, race, religion, culture, and nationality prefer to learn. The purpose of this study was to identify and compare the preferred learning-style characteristics of…

Reciprocal peer teaching (RPT), wherein students alternate roles as teacher and learner, has been applied in several educational arenas with varying success. Here, we describe the implementation of a reciprocal peer teaching protocol in a human gross anatomy laboratory curriculum. We compared the outcomes of the RPT class with those of previous…

The participation of large numbers of countries in current international assessments involving reading literacy--40 in PIRLS 2006 (administered to students in Grade 4 in primary schools) and 57 in PISA 2006 (administered to 15-year-olds in post-primary schools)--suggests that governments and other bodies find the outcomes to be useful. This…

Background: This meta-analysis of interventions with challenging behaviour in children with disabilities updates a comprehensive meta-analysis that previously addressed reported standards of practice and effectiveness of different strategies. Method: Four effect-size algorithms were calculated for published intervention cases, and results analysed…

This article provides an overview of the empirical effects of students' academic choices on academic performance (e.g., amount, quality, and rate of work). Twenty-nine separate experiments within 26 publications were included in the review. The choices involved performance goals and standards, the nature of assignments, instructional support…

This study consists of a comparative analysis of patterns of de-escalation between ages 17-18 and 32, based on data from two well-known prospective longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (a study of 411 working-class males in London) and the Montreal Two Samples Longitudinal Study (a sample of 470 adjudicated…

The study examines the home literacy experiences, emergent literacy skills, and instructional experiences of a sample of Chilean kindergarten children (n = 126) and kindergarten families (n = 188) nested in 12 kindergarten classrooms from different socioeconomic status groups and types of schools. Descriptive information is given showing the level…

Adolescent suicidality is a serious problem among American youth. Common risk factors for adolescent suicidality include depression and conduct problems but there is little agreement on the best means to assess these factors. We compared multiple informants (mothers, fathers, the adolescent and a sibling) and multiple assessment techniques using a…

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness is considered a critical element in determining whether or not faculty members are retained at higher education institutions; academic milestones such as tenure and promotion often require documentation of the quality of faculty teaching. As methods of assessing teaching effectiveness evolve, concerns about the…

Language learners need to feel secure and to be free of stress so they can focus on language tasks (Ellis, 1994). A language teacher should use different tools to encourage students and make them involved in learning process. Humor and song are effective tools, as they develop creativity and make the class environment an appropriate setting for…

Merging the literatures of how to enhance young children's vocabulary development and how to improve learning through play, this study tested two vocabulary teaching protocols on at-risk preschool children: Explicit Instructional Vocabulary Protocol (EIVP) and shortened EIVP and a play session (EIVP + Play). From a group of 118 lowest-performing…

The research described in this dissertation explores the impact of utilizing a LEGO-robotics integrated engineering and mathematics program to support fifth grade students' learning of ratios and proportion in an extracurricular program. The research questions guiding this research study were (1) how do students' test results compare for students…

This dissertation is comprised of two manuscripts that resulted from a single study that tested the efficacy of teaching parents how to infuse comprehension strategy instruction into read alouds with their preschool-aged children. Twenty dyads, each composed of an incoming kindergartener and one of his or her parents, participated in this study.…