Stepping Stones to Literacy is a tool for elementary school improvement teams to evaluate and strengthen their reading programs. Each Stepping Stone is a guided activity to stimulate reflection and guide systematic inquiry. It is a collaborative, active research approach to evaluation (Levesque & Hinton 2001). The goal is to eliminate the gap…

Universities and colleges accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education are facing the prospects of measuring dispositions related to teaching. Dispositions selected for teacher candidates at the University of West Alabama are characteristics desirable in N-12 candidates. This pilot study was designed to assess…

This book provides educators and education policy makers a picture of where the field of teaching adult English language learners is today in order to build a more effective delivery system for the future. It places adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) in the broader context of the U.S. education system (K-12 and adult education), then…

This collection of papers examines what it means to teach culture as an integrated part of language from both the language learner's and the language teacher's perspectives. The 11 papers include the following: "Teaching Cultures as an Integrated Part of Language: Implications for the Aims, Approaches and Pedagogies of Language Teaching"…

This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of a project designed to train a cadre of school counseling students to work with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students receiving special education services. The project was a pilot track under the Master of Science in Counselor Education, School Counseling program, at Florida…

Cultural and socioeconomic barriers to girls' and women's education are reflected in the female literacy rate, average wage, and girls' enrollment, dropout, attainment, and participation rates in formal education. Development of national education has been given top priority in the Indonesian national development. The education system is organized…

Statistically, Thailand has eliminated gender disparity in access to education. Reasons that four women's conferences made very little impression on education reform could be no significant or overt discrimination against girls' enrollment and employment; education opportunity as more an issue of class (affordability) than gender (culture); and…

This paper addresses the issue of how to make school matter to historically disenfranchised, inner city African American youth, as well as youth from other struggling ethnic minority groups. It asserts that one way to do this is to reconceptualize approaches to the acquisition of literacy and literacy skills in teaching, engaging, and motivating…

School readiness is important for children, for their families, and for society at large. The authors' exploration of school readiness focuses on how the home literacy environment, parenting behavior, and social characteristics affect two aspects of school readiness: basic skills, such as reading and math; and behavior problems, including…

The quality of teacher preparation is frequently under public scrutiny. In this collection, experts in literacy teacher preparation offer ten truths--based on evidence, not ideology-- that support the ongoing positive efforts of teacher educators. In this book, the reader will find: A review of the existing knowledge base; Evidence of the improved…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) covered five different grade levels, with more than 40 countries collecting data in more than 30 different languages. More than a million students were tested. The present report contains the TIMSS results for students in the final year of secondary school. Mathematics and science…

Drugs are an important life concern of adolescents, yet statistics show alarming and disturbing increases internationally in drug abuse. This paper reports on research that examines how adolescents cognitively process information about drugs. Four 17-year-old girls at a Catholic college in Sydney, Australia participated in a two-phase experiment…

Is a developing country like Nigeria information rich or information poor? The first impression is of scarcity, but a closer examination reveals unexplored riches. There is a wealth of information in the oral tradition, but it is not found in schools and libraries. There is information in libraries, but language and reading level make it…

This study examined the theories and beliefs about learning, teaching, and curriculum held by the course developers of an undergraduate educational technology course to determine whether their espoused beliefs were evident in actual classroom practice. The curriculum represented a radical change in a course designed to provide education students…

Impelled by students' difficulties to learn new concepts from assigned readings, this paper examines effective literacy instruction in their respective classrooms. By targeting three linked areas of concern: students' motivation to read assigned texts, the learning strategies students bring to their reading experiences, and students' abilities to…