There has been an explosion of knowledge over the last few years about how children's earliest experiences set the stage for success in learning to read and write. Most experts agree that children who reach kindergarten with certain characteristics--an interest in books, a fondness for conversation, a curiosity about the world--are more likely to…

The study describes the nature of pre-service teachers' idiosyncratic metaphors for the concept of statistical sample. These metaphors were investigated because of their potential to provide insight about individuals' content knowledge and how that content knowledge is enacted during teaching. Personal metaphors were elicited from 54 pre-service…

Drash and Tudor's argument that autism is a contingency-shaped disorder of verbal behavior is logical and consistent with behavioral principles, but the argument's premises have no direct empirical support and some conflicting evidence. The quantity and quality of research needed to support such a theory is compared to that found in the area of…

As often as language teachers lecture about the importance of continual practice to adolescent learners, the dullness of homework exercises designed primarily to be educational has difficulty competing with popular media designed solely to be entertaining. Recently, numerous attempts have been made to develop "edutainment" titles that seek to…

Media, particularly television, are increasingly prevalent in contemporary life and yet the pedagogical potential of this resource remains largely untapped. Racism, insidious in its manifestations, is frequently the subject of media spectacle that tends to fixate, frame, and fracture discourse about this vital issue. This study examines how three…

In this paper our first purpose is to outline a way of thinking about organizations and administration that has recently been gaining ground among theoreticians and practitioners, one that is portrayed frequently as a replacement for the well established newtonian or systems perspective. This way of thinking is the quantum perspective. Our second…

PreK-12 teachers in an urban school district enrolled in a course designed to examine the complexities of teaching in urban schools. This course was part of a grant aimed at increasing math and science achievement of their students. Teachers critically examined local and national policies and conditions that added to the complexities of their…

Being a first-year teacher in New York City is not easy. The author received much of the same preparation and advice that he and his colleagues give their students. But even the best education courses and a positive student teaching experience do not seem to be enough to take the edge off of a year he remembers barely surviving. The author…

White and Hopi antiracist scholars and activists from working-class backgrounds, the authors write from a common heritage of claiming social origins the academy deems suspect. Refusing to abandon their social origins at the gate of the ivory tower, they name the colonial foundations of the academy and seek a new naming through their…

In this paper, we argue that a complete understanding of language processing, in this case word-recognition processes, requires consideration both of multiple languages and of developmental processes. To illustrate these goals, we will summarize a 10-year research program exploring word-recognition processes in Korean adults and children. We…

Using videotaped lectures to practice American Sign Language (ASL) used to be a pretty tiresome process for hearing-impaired and other students at the University of Rochester (NY). In order to access the videos, students had to trek to the campus library, reserve an audio/visual station in the media center, take out the appropriate tape, and watch…

Recent information on the incidence and types of language and communication problems experienced by female delinquents and the relation they have to emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) indicate a contribution to the problems these girls have encountered in social and academic situations. Pragmatics (i.e., use of language in interpersonal…

Deaf students at two institutions of higher education and hearing students taking the same degree programmes completed the Course Experience Questionnaire and a short version of the Approaches to Studying Inventory. The deaf students were just as likely as the hearing students to adopt a meaning orientation to their studies but were more likely to…

The students in 21st-century public middle schools are increasingly diverse in terms of language proficiency, cultural and ethnic representation, and varied levels of poverty; and, yet, they are being educated in a political climate that encourages mainstreaming special education and gifted services in the regular classroom. Given this context,…

This study examined 68 Web sources selected by 19 second-language (L2) students while preparing to write research papers. Students submitted an annotated bibliography consisting of ten sources from print or electronic media. Each Web source was classified according to type (e.g., news or advocacy). Of the 68 sites, 29 were considered conventional,…