Many schools have responded to incidences of school violence by installing elaborate security hardware. This article focuses on a school that took a different approach. Students and staff at Chugiak High School chose to wage peace in the school and worked to reclaim their school as nonviolent, caring community. (BF)

Evaluated the PREG conceptual model of human question asking. Found the model was sufficient as it accounted for nearly all of the questions produced by students, and was discriminating in that it could identify the conditions in which particular classes of questions are or are not generated. (Author/SD)

Describes a year-long social studies program called "Passport to the Millennium." Students "travel" around the world learning about the history, geography, culture, and economy of different countries. The program is appropriate for students in elementary to secondary grades. Includes a sample lesson plan. (CMK)

Words can be powerful tools to engage students with disabilities in self-determined behaviors. When teachers are cognizant of their choice of words and manner of interaction, they can empower students to develop a sense of who they are, what they are capable of doing, and why they behave the way they do. This article explores how everyday…

D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (this issue) use six criteria to evaluate the published findings from seven different studies of PCB exposure and neuropsychological function. They point out a number of weaknesses or flaws in each study and conclude that these weaknesses make the overall conclusion that PCB exposure negatively…

Background: This longitudinal study of 48 children diagnosed with autism at 2-5 years of age was designed to test the hypothesis that diagnosis would remain stable for most of the sample but that there would be improvements in symptom severity, adaptive behavior, and emotional responsiveness in adolescence. Methods: A sample of children with…

Background: In this study, psychosocial functioning of different groups of young children with learning problems was investigated using a diverse set of psychosocial variables (including behaviour problems, academic motivation, social preference, and self-concept). Methods: For this purpose, children with low academic achievement, with a specific…

The predictive validity and utility of assessment procedures can be increased by adding predictors to the prediction supplied by general ability tests. Of Jensen's early work comes the suggestion of focusing on the cognitive ability short-term memory (STM), especially for low-"g" Black children. Meta-analysis convincingly shows high…

A meta-analysis was performed on the 133 cognitive and behavioral papers in autism using comparison groups in the 1999-2002 period. High-functioning (average IQ: 84.7), adolescents (average, 14.4 years) are largely dominant. IQ is the most frequent matching variable in use (51.2%). The instruments that are most frequently used to determine IQ or…

The ultimate aim of this research is to specify and implement a general authoring framework for content and knowledge engineering for Intelligent Educational Systems (IES). In this context we attempt to develop an authoring tool supporting this framework that is powerful in its functionality, generic in its support of instructional strategies and…

Evaluation of teacher performance is usually done with the use of ratings made by students, peers, and principals or supervisors, and at times, self-ratings made by the teachers themselves. The trouble with this practice is that it is obviously subjective, and vulnerable to what Glass and Martinez call the "politics of teacher…

Performance assessment is an important task in all levels of education, both as input for identifying remedial needs of individual students and for improving general quality of education. Although explicit assessment measures can be obtained through objective standardized testing, it is much more difficult to capture fuzzier, or tacit, performance…

Of the many books read by this author over the past several years, one in particular held his attention: "Becoming human" by J. Vanier (1998). In this book, Vanier spells out several interconnected principles for promoting and practicing a curriculum of "becoming human." Vanier's first principle is that "all humans are…

This study examines teachers' beliefs and their practices of emotional socialization in three child care centers. Interviews with teachers revealed that teachers shared some, but not all, of their beliefs with regard to their role in children's emotional development and views of their own socialization practices. The findings from classroom…

This paper describes part of the results of a study investigating how adolescents, between the ages of 14 and 15, construct and share meaning about their local environments. Specifically, the results presented focus on how adolescents perceive and interpret spatial and three-dimensional data presented in various formats, such as in terms of…