Summarizes results of a statewide survey examining (Tennessee) school administrators' attitudes about educational research and identifies educational research/practice barriers. Many administrators surveyed believe that research reports are often difficult to understand, too technical, and impractical. Administrators with doctoral degrees felt…

Discusses a report, "Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education," on how education professors view public education. Argues that the report may have been biased by the political attitudes of its sponsoring organization. Examines how this could have produced the "professor bashing" that the researcher…

A study of 15 popular scientific journal articles and 15 specialist medical-research articles indicates that in medical discourse hedging, the expression of tentativeness and possibility by epistemic devices, can be applied in less specialized English- for-Special-Purposes (ESP) texts such as popular scientific articles, but in different…

Offers a framework for remedying some of the problems associated with the use of statistical significance tests through modifying journal editorial policies. Reviews examples from some journals that have established guidelines for reporting results of statistical significance tests. (SLD)

This article describes practical methods for agencies to move from a process to an outcomes focus when preparing and presenting reports to payers and regulators. Essential components of an outcomes system are outlined, and methods for preparing and presenting reports are drawn from experiences at Father Flanagan's Boy's Home. (Contains…

Explores the encounter between teachers and research literature, examines whether this encounter has any prospects, and determines the features necessary for a meaningful encounter. Illustrates that research literature is not part of the typical teacher's library and that there is a gap between the researcher's world and teacher's world. (CMK)

Examines various criticisms of school effectiveness research, arguing that school effectiveness research needs to provide (1) justification for the interpretations of "effectiveness" defined as the unexplained part of performance in a statistical model and (2) a clearer conception of why certain relationships exist. Concludes by addressing the…

Describes one elementary school's multiage assessment plan. Describes how standards were developed, and describes the assessment plan's guiding element: the progress report arranged as a continuum of objectives that serve as a goal indicator and a reporting mechanism. Discusses how objectives are assessed, record keeping and documentation, and the…

Introduces a special journal issue on children and poverty, reviewing child poverty rates in the United States, the nature and dimensions of poverty, and the state of child poverty research. Also examines processes mediating the influences of poverty, contextual influences on children in poverty, and child outcomes, with reference to the remaining…

Evaluates the report "The Quiet Evolution: Changing the Face of Arts Education," which documents the results from the evaluation of the Regional Institute Grants. Examines the evaluation protocol. Asserts that the report should have addressed forward-looking reappraisals. Addresses the influence on arts education of emergent models of cultural and…

Proposes an approach for critical engagement with autobiographical text. Argues that by becoming better aware of the teller's intentionality and his/her insights gained from telling a (re)constructed version of self, the listener and the teller can engage in personal and socially transformative dialogue. (Contains 16 references.) (Author/WRM)

Investigates the practices required for reading graphs in high school textbooks and scientific journals. Discusses the role of high school textbooks in the appropriation of authentic scientific graph-related practices. Finds that scientific journals provide more resources to facilitate graph reading and feature more elaborate descriptions and…

Reviews the literature on scholarly journal demand, use, and readership over the past 40 to 50 years. Discusses: journal demand; journal use; use of separate copies of articles; readership of articles; time and cost of reading; usefulness and value of article information; information-seeking patterns; age of articles read; factors affecting…

In educating students to understand research-based publications, an interactive approach was designed. Students were first instructed to identify and locate different sources that publish information produced from research. Then students were taught how to carefully evaluate the quality of these sources and the research reported. Classroom…

This article reports on two studies that used three different samples (N = 644) to construct and validate a multidimensional measure of managerial coaching skill. The four dimensions of coaching skill measured were Open Communication, Team Approach, Value People, and Accept Ambiguity. The two studies assessed the context adequacy, dimensionality,…