Investigated the impact of parental involvement on elementary students' educational outcomes. Data from a study of 193 Los Angeles area second and fifth graders and their mothers indicated that parent school involvement contributes to positive child outcomes. The involvement appears to be a manifestation of parental enthusiasm and positive…

A study investigated the lexical knowledge of 40 Turkish-Dutch bilingual children aged 9 and 11 years and living in the Netherlands. Results indicate important differences between available lexical knowledge in the first language (L1) and second language (L2); children allot to L1 words less extensive and less varied meaning aspects than to L2…

Studied relations between parenting and school performance of fourth and fifth graders in 75 Asian-American, 109 Latino, and 91 European-American families. Ethnic differences emerged in parents' expectations for education attainment and grades, childrearing beliefs, perceptions of parental efficacy, and in relations between these beliefs and…

Evaluated Jump into Action, a non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM)-prevention program that encouraged students to eat well and exercise regularly to reduce NIDDM risks. Surveys of predominantly Hispanic fifth graders and their teachers at Texas-Mexico border schools indicated that the program increased NIDDM-prevention knowledge and…

Discusses the possibilities for pleasure, community, and collective meaning making among fifth- and sixth-grade students and various adults (teachers, parents, and school staff) during their prolonged engagement with a single literary work, Lois Lowry's "The Giver," as they read and reread the novel, annotating the text with their…

Examined the relationships between maternal employment and schoolchildren's educational aspirations in Korea. Found that children whose mothers were working full-time had lower educational aspirations, although maternal involvement and parents' educational expectations mitigated these effects. (JPB)

Describes a study of fifth graders interacting with their teacher, local, and distant peers over a telecommunications network, that focused on how the information exchanges impacted students' development of audience awareness in written compositions. Analytic and holistic scoring procedures were applied to determine differences in students'…

This study examined whether differences in social-cognitive determinants of activity behavior could account for gender differences in physical activity. Fifth graders (n=365) provided information on afterschool physical activity and determinants of activity behavior. Only differences in self-efficacy and participation in community sports accounted…

Examined how gender, grade level, empathy, and cultural orientation influenced fifth and eighth grade African American students' moral judgements. Students completed a variety of assessments. There was greater endorsement of communalism among girls than boys. Grade was a significant predictor of moral reasoning. The full complement of predictive…

This dissertation examined the efficacy of using minimally trained college undergraduates to tutor third- through fifth-grade students with reading difficulties. Tutors receiving four hours of training in scripted reading program based on the principles of Direct Instruction and emphasizing explicit instruction in phonological awareness and…

The purpose of this study was twofold. One purpose was to identify the locally negotiated literate practices that defined ways of communicating information and knowledge across the curriculum in a fourth/fifth grade classroom. Through an ethnographic and sociolinguistic set of analyses, this investigation illustrated how the teacher worked to…

Overweight children would not be the first thing a visitor to Grafton, West Virginia, would think of when seeing the small farms that cling to steep hillsides and cultivate the bottomland along the Tygart River as one drives into town. Like most of the state, the landscape around this village nods to pastoral enterprise, suggesting a place where…

Students are usually quick to draw conclusions about their surroundings. Their generalizations, however, are often based on a single experience or even a story recounted by a friend. An individual's ability to reason inductively improves as he gains more experience in the world. The ability to draw broad conclusions also improves with an…

"American history," writer James Baldwin told a group of teachers in 1963, "is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it" (1963/1996, 227). Children, Baldwin argued, have "the right and necessity to examine everything." In particular, they need to…

The present study outlines a specific three-level hierarchy of the cognitive system, in particular the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive processes in mathematics. The emphasis is on the impact of processing efficiency and working memory ability on the development of self-representation and mathematical performance. We developed and…