This book presents performance-based projects to provide elementary school students both the structure and the freedom to become actively engaged in their own learning. The approach is based on the concept of authentic learning, which advocates a relevant, real world experience to personally engage students in learning. The book is divided into…

Developments in adult education during the past few years have attracted general public interest. Reports, based upon scientific studies, that the ability to learn efficiently continues until late in life, were given widespread dissemination. The significance of this fact for education was readily comprehended not only by schoolmen but by the lay…

Providing Hispanic elementary students with a great variety of books in Spanish and 60 minutes a week of free reading time resulted in significantly higher Spanish reading performance with no loss of English reading proficiency and significant improvement of reading attidues, compared with control groups. (MH)

Describes a competency based curriculum approach for ornamental horticulture. A horticulture cluster core consisting of 18 tasks was developed with competency sheets for each task. The competency sheet contains six columns: skills to be attained, task list, materials required, student activities, evaluation methods, and a recommended time period.…

Discusses the importance to science departments of processes used to track student performance and how assessment data are used. Adding value has two principal aspects. The first is quantitative, where gains in knowledge, skills, and understanding demonstrated by students are measured. The second is a cross-curricular aspect, evaluating the…

This study evaluated the reliability and validity of a battery of instruments based on Multiple Intelligences theory, including teacher checklists and performance-based assessment activities developed for the identification of talent in culturally diverse and/or low-income kindergarten and first-grade students. Acceptable reliability but…

Examines the relationship between story-telling and children's construction of meaning. Includes transcripts of children's discussions of a story involving Vietnamese refugee children. Maintains that children, especially when given encouraging contexts, can construct and discover meaningful insights. Discusses the role of the teacher in this…

Describes an observational study conducted to determine critical areas of school effectiveness. Notes that quality middle-level education has the components of educational empowerment and involvement and teacher techniques that focus on developmentally appropriate strategies, block scheduling rather than one-period scheduling, and ability grouping…

This paper presents results from a 3-year longitudinal case study of 10 racially and socioeconomically mixed secondary schools participating in detracking reform. It explores how broadly held conceptions of intelligence intervene in efforts to detrack schools and examines new constructions of intelligence and how they fit into school detracking.…

A Scottish council commissioned a study to inform development of policy concerning ability grouping, timetabling, and other practices related to the transition from primary to secondary schooling. Although the researchers became aware that the council expected a report supportive of their policies, the data supported the view that the key to…

Status-based social rules associated with race, gender, and ability were studied for 216 fifth and sixth graders, evenly male and female and white and African American. Questionnaire responses indicate that respondent approval ratings are strongly affected by the status of the target student. (SLD)

Explores the impact of the social and academic diversity of the class on teachers' perspectives about their schools as workplaces. Data from 370 Israeli secondary teachers indicate that classroom diversity is correlated negatively with average academic ability and positively with class size and discipline problems. (SLD)

Describes a self-instruction procedure designed to provide students of science and technology at the tertiary level with a basic vocabulary in a foreign language of around 1,000 items. The technique represents an efficient method for bridging the gap between the vocabulary that beginning L2 students possess and that required to read L2 scientific…

In a follow-up study of the effects of early day care on children's cognitive and socioemotional competence, children who entered day care before the age of 1 year were found to have a better academic performance at ages 8 and 13 and to receive more positive teacher ratings than other children on several socioemotional variables. (Author/GLR)

Presents a study to investigate the prevalence of mathematics anxiety in Navajo middle school students (n=358) and to explore possible relationships between learning styles and mathematics anxiety and achievement. Multiple regression procedures indicated that spatial ability and mathematics achievement were negatively correlated to mathematics…