Presents activities that use marine organisms with plant-like appearances to help students build classification skills and illustrate some of the less obvious differences between plants and animals. Compares mechanisms by which sessile plants and animals deal with common problems such as obtaining energy, defending themselves, successfully…

There is a chasm in our knowledge of the relationship that exists between reading-writing and scientific literacy. This article was written with the intent of stimulating research on writing and reading to learn science. (ZWH)

Four writers (Yerker Andersson, Trevor Johnston, Leila Monaghan, and Brian Street) respond to Graham Turner's discussion of deaf culture, considering labeling categories and approaches to definitions of "deaf culture." (Contains 24 references.) (LB)

Turner's responses to discussion of deaf culture cover these topics: deaf perspective; approaches to description; transparency and explicitness; labeling; historical awareness; and "thinking beyond." (Contains seven references.) (LB)

Argues for precision (consistency) in citing, proposing an approach to citation analysis that ranks citation-signallers according to usefulness. Suggests that it is misguided to classify citation-signallers by the nature of the motivations inferred to underlie their use. (JKP)

A genre-based analysis of 20 sociology research articles was used to present a provisional, pedagogically usable description of the communicative categories or "moves" found in the Results sections. The categories (described in terms of function, lexis, and grammatical form) extend and refine previous models and provide evidence of…

Three experiments examined the ability of 60 3-year-old children's ability to select homonym pairs and the extent to which they realized that homonyms represent 2 different categories. Results confirm that children have the metalinguistic skills necessary to identify homonym pairs and to realize they represent two different categories, suggesting…

Suggests methods for developing higher level objective test questions. Taxonomies that define learning outcomes are discussed; and examples for various test types are presented, including multiple correct answers; more complex forms, including classification and multiple true-false; relations and correlates; and interpretive exercises. (LRW)

Wimbiscus enhances Rummler and Brache's model for improving organizational performance by defining nine performance variables and integrating the model with scholars' views of three human resource development elements: organizations, process, and job/performer. Brache and Rummler respond to parts of Wimbiscus' critique. (SK)

A process to translate cross-company competence frameworks into company-specific ones involved 10 steps: understanding generalizability, identifying additions/deletions and aggregations/disaggregations, prioritizing, changing the fine print, identifying examples of company practice, distinguishing actual/idealized practice, locating competence on…

Major proposals that psychologists have made about how humans segment their world into categories are reviewed. The anthropological literature that bears on the same issues is explored, noting its implications for psychological theory. Cross-cultural data provide substantial constraints for theories of category coherence. (SLD)

Relative prevalence of stereotyped behaviors was studied with 246 children and adults with developmental disabilities. Two staff members completed a 54-item checklist assessing stereotyped behaviors, abnormal focused affections, compulsions, rigidity, savant skills, and defensiveness. Factor analyses produced weak evidence for a general stereotypy…

Three studies examined preschool children's understanding of categorical hierarchies, testing their ability to form categories at different levels of generality and to include the same objects in multiple categories. Found that, contrary to the implications of previous studies, two- and three-year olds appear to have both categorization skills.…

Four experiments involving 159 undergraduates examined beliefs about the nature of water, testing a strong version of psychological essentialism that takes belief in an essence to be the primary determinant of category membership and word use. Results suggest that essentialist beliefs may not fully explain category membership judgments. (SLD)

A proportional reduction in loss (PRL) measure for reliability of categorical data is explored for the situation in which each of "N" judges assigns a subject to one of "K" categories. Calculating a lower bound for reliability under more general conditions than had been proposed is demonstrated. (SLD)