The work we report in this special issue attempted to exploit the power of technology and cognitive theory to help make conceptual systems taught in large college courses truly useful in students' future lives. Facing evidence that traditional instructional models have not succeeded in this regard, we sought feasible course designs and…

Deviant behaviour and victimization at school have been consistently related to poor psychological adjustment in adolescents. This research explores the mediating role that parents and teachers have in adolescent psychological distress in 973 Spanish students aged 11-16 years old. Structural equation analyses results showed that adolescent deviant…

This study evaluates the validity of two aggression scales for predicting observations of malicious or disruptive behavior at school. Subgroups of a sample of 1,560 children (age 8.6 plus or minus 1.5 years) were assessed using (a) peer nominations of aggression, (b) teacher reports on the Teacher Report Form (TRF) of the Child Behavior Checklist…

This article describes an action research project, based within a school, to develop and increase the social resiliency of students with special education needs in both school and community settings. The programme included role-plays, scenarios and problem solving. An assessment tool was developed to measure self-esteem amongst the students and…

Background: Differences in service utilization indicating that boys use more mental health services than girls were analyzed to see if they could be explained by known correlates of service use. These correlates were arranged into individual (severe emotional disturbance, level of impairment and externalizing disorders), family (parental…

Background: Increasing numbers of children are referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services because of disruptive behaviour. Recent reviews on the origins of conduct problems indicate that the most severe and persistent forms are found predominantly among males with a range of neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities, which are likely to have…

The study of video game effects has been marked by two very different approaches. The first approach is represented by social scientists, who, with some exceptions, seek to understand the effects of games on users. The second approach is favored by humanists, who seek to understand the meaning and context of games. To date, these two groups have…

Although there has been much debate about "what" teachers need to know about technology, less attention has been paid to "how" they are supposed to learn it. Teacher preparation programs need to go beyond merely training teachers in how to use specific software and hardware tools, and instead focus on developing an…

Contemporary schools are faced daily with the challenge of identifying the instructional needs of migrant learners who are having notable difficulty learning. Given this reality, it is important to consider contemporary questions of special and general education practices. To explore these questions, this article draws from observation in a…

This study explores novice teachers' experiences as team leaders for school-community partnerships. Six focal teachers who were enrolled in an MA program in teacher development and leadership were recruited for the study. The focal teachers volunteered to serve as leaders of a reading-focused community involvement activity as members of their…

The aim of this article is to review the interaction in the Turkish distance education system, Open Education Faculty (OEF) of Anadolu University. The article examines the Turkish distance education system, according to the following four types of interactions; (a) learner content interaction, (b) learner-instructor interaction, (c)…

This study investigated the effects of learning communities on the educational development of first-year college students at a large, urban, highly selective, research university. These communities, known as "clusters," comprised a year long sequence of theme-oriented courses that were team taught and that included interdisciplinary lectures and…

Throughout the year, students of Contemporary Issues and the Visual Arts class, an interdisciplinary course for high school juniors and seniors at a large Canadian suburban high school, devised and created a number of individual and collective artistic investigations and creative cultural interventions, both within the classroom and the larger…

There is growing concern in the United States about the education of the students regarded as least likely to succeed in school. Indeed, a major thrust of U.S. President Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation is designed to meet the educational needs of those students who traditionally have struggled the most in school. Variously labeled as…

This paper examines the recent development of a computer-assisted learning program--in Practice--at the School of Health Science, in the University of Wales Swansea. The project, which began in 2001, was developed in close collaboration with The Meningitis Trust, the aim being to produce a software package to increase nursing students' knowledge…