In the labour market, formal qualifications--both school and vocational or university degrees--are of increasing importance. This may be especially true in Germany, where formal qualifications are highly valued. Dropping out of vocational or university training is therefore regarded as a risk for young people in the process of entering the labour…

Seven-and eight-year-old deaf children and hearing children of equivalent reading age were presented with a number of tasks designed to assess reading, spelling, productive vocabulary, speechreading, phonological awareness, short-term memory, and nonverbal intelligence. The two groups were compared for similarities and differences in the levels of…

This study investigated teachers' perceptions of how one school district supported and sustained a teacher-led staff development committee's professional development program. In this small, rural school district, teachers regarded as exemplary by their administrators and colleagues were invited to serve on the district's staff development…

Teachers and other school staff are overwhelmed with myriad concerns. As a result, many view positive youth development as just "one more thing" to add to an already full plate. This article assists educators in understanding how positive youth development (PYD) is inherent in good educational practice, and does not have to be one more thing.…

Two aspects of the reliability of multidimensional measures can be distinguished: the amount of scale score variance that is accounted for by all underlying factors (composite reliability) and the degree to which the scale score reflects one particular factor (construct reliability). Confidence intervals for composite and construct reliabilities…

Each month, "Curriculum Review" offers teachers mutual support, the sharing of ideas, and words of encouragement to help them face challenges in the classroom. The March 2004 issue of "Curriculum Review" contains the following articles: (1) "We Hear from Readers"; (2) "What They're Saying"; (3) "Technology Update"; (4) "4 Ways to Give Students a…

Psychological acceptance (acceptance) and emotional intelligence (EI) are two relatively new individual characteristics that are hypothesised to affect well-being and performance at work. This study compares both of them, in terms of their ability to predict various well-being outcomes (i.e. general mental health, physical well-being, and job…

This article focuses on the nature of "family learning" programmes in marginalised communities. Such programmes present a series of radical challenges (in the sense of getting to the root of things) to policy makers and professionals alike: about, for instance, the kinds of "learning" on offer and the neglect, perhaps…

This article is based on the author's personal experience of an uncomfortable discussion with a family. Issues are explored around the difficulty in anticipating how a young child with a learning delay will respond to speech-language therapy and how the practitioner will give accurate information. Two key journal articles on giving bad news are…

This study investigated correlates of domain-general and domain-specific components of creativity. 158 college students completed a questionnaire that assessed their motivational and personality traits (i.e., intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, creative personality, and originality in word association) as well as intellectual abilities (SAT verbal…

Emotional intelligence and emotion work are two research areas traditionally presented as distinct. This article reviews their definitions, examines their intersections, and illustrates the advantage of approaching emotion research from an interdisciplinary framework. Conclusions address the following: (a) An employee's emotional intelligence or…

This article presents an interview with Professor Alan Davies who was born in Wales, studied at Oxford University and Birmingham University, and taught in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh, completing 40 years this year. Professor Davies has travelled widely to give invited talks and seminars, participate in applied linguistics conferences,…

Visual recognition memory is a robust form of memory that is evident from early infancy, shows pronounced developmental change, and is influenced by many of the same factors that affect adult memory; it is surprisingly resistant to decay and interference. Infant visual recognition memory shows (a) modest reliability, (b) good discriminant…

This article presents three studies that were designed to map the dimensions involved in "g," with an emphasis of the place of self-awareness in it. The first study involved preschoolers from 3 to 7 years of age. These were examined in three domains (spatial, quantitative and categorical reasoning) with both actual tasks and tasks addressed to the…

We examined models of individual change and correlates of change in the growth of reading skills in a sample of 40 children from kindergarten through third grade. A broad range of correlates was examined and included family literacy, oral language, emergent reading, intelligence, spelling, and demographic variables. Individual growth curve…