States that strategic out-of-school learning opportunities (home assignments) can enrich social studies learning by providing for life applications of what is taught in school. Describes how to create a curricular unit, the purposes and functions of home assignments, and the parental involvement initiated because of these assignments. (CMK)

Describes the results of a qualitative study in Montana of 12 American Indians with a doctoral degree. Finds that participants shared three characteristics that helped them navigate the academic pipeline: ability to function bi-culturally, spirituality, and a traditional understanding of reciprocity. (VWC)

Analyzes students' evaluations of teaching instruction in a social studies methods course when the course was taught in an active instructional approach as opposed to a passive approach. Finds that the students rated the instructor of the active course higher on the instructor's ability to promote understanding of course topics and overall…

Explores disappointment in the relationship between students and teachers. Focuses on how teachers express their disappointments in students, how teachers manipulate disappointment to affect student behavior, the role of disappointment for one's self-concept, and how teachers can exacerbate the negative effects of disappointment. Discusses how…

Examines the benefits of reader response by means of student letters to authors. Notes that students involved in response writing become more interested in reading, are more reflective individuals, and more responsible for monitoring and resolving their own questions. (SD)

Relative reinforcing efficacy refers to the behavior-strengthening or maintaining property of a reinforcer when compared to that of another reinforcer. Traditional measures of relative reinforcing efficacy sometimes have led to discordant results across and within studies. By contrast, previous investigations have found traditional measures to be…

While not all gifted children love reading and writing and they do not all have access to books or grow up in literary families the great majority of these children crave the rich and imaginative world that literacy has to offer. Differences in culture, age, and geography influence this love of storytellers, poets, songwriters, and novelists, but…

Journal writing has been used for a long time in the classroom as a part of an integrated approach to teaching literature. There are several different types of journals: (1) reading response journals, in which students react to what they have read; (2) lifebooks, which are similar to diaries or personal journals; and (3) dialog journals, in which…

Educational psychologists and practicing educators agree that student motivation is a central and often problematic issue for education. Understanding and working with those factors that influence students' ability and willingness to engage with curriculum content and intellectual challenges help teachers increase the likelihood that our students…

Recent research has focused on the relationship between language and identity (Ivanic, 1998; Kanno & Norton, 2003). International students who come to Canada to learn English as a second language realize that to succeed in the academic community, they must be particularly adept at writing in English for academic purposes. This article…

This article reports a study of parental motivation, attitudes, support, and commitment for the second year of the two-way immersion (TWI) program at an elementary school in San Bernardino, California. Findings include the unique aspects of border communities; similarities and differences between Spanish-language and English-language participants;…

Through a program known as Call Me MISTER--named for Sidney Poitier's famous line in the 1967 film "In the Heat of the Night," in which he tells the Southern white sheriff that, up North, "They call me "Mister" Tibbs"--the recruitment of more young, gifted black men to teach elementary school is getting a boost.…

The study examines how social and cultural factors mediate the teaching and learning of science in an Australian high school. Grade 10 students, many of them new migrants, often transient and from circumstances of economic hardship, were taught a 5-week unit on chemistry by a teacher with social and cultural histories similar to those of most of…

Student self-beliefs can impact their attention and learning processes and have been considered in instructional design theories and models. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-beliefs and mathematics achievement of adolescent students in Japan. Students included in these analyses were from the Third…

This article explores some way that technology can be used to promote mathematical thinking and problem solving. Specifically, it focuses on the use of technology for multiple representations. (Contains 8 figures.)