This study investigated the effect of children's relationships on conversations that took place when children were working on a collaborative writing task, and examined the quality of the writing effort. A total of 62 fourth graders worked under three conditions: (1) individually; (2) with a best friend; and (3) with a nonfriend who was an…

One of the four algebra word problem structures found in K-12 textbooks is the propositional relation structure (Mayer, 1982). This type of problem asks students to establish equivalences between the variables or noun referents in the problem. The literature available indicates that students have inordinate difficulties, when trying to solve a…

This position paper explores the issue of violence in northern Canadian schools and personal perceptions and reactions to the violent events. Spindler's phrase "sociocultural contextualization" is viewed as placing and examining education and the educative process within the social and cultural environment of the community served by the…

A conceptual analysis deals with the question of what is meant by the term "teaching." In other words, what are the necessary criteria of teaching? Criterion 1 is that there be someone in authority to fulfill the role of the teacher. Criterion 2 insists that someone fulfill the role of pupil. These patently obvious criteria are not…

The essays in this collection provide insights into the dilemmas faced by immigrants and ethnic minorities and by school personnel and policy makers. The first part of the book consists of comparative studies of ethnic identity, and the second part focuses on some lessons learned from studies of ethnic identification and equity, with implications…

This conference focused on critical thinking, language, and inquiry across the disciplines through the perspectives of scholars and practitioners within a variety of academic disciplines. This volume reflects the thoughts of 48 authors representing 20 academic fields; it is divided into two main parts. The first part is composed of papers that…

An obstacle in Natural Language understanding is the existence of lexical gaps, i.e. words or word senses that are not in the lexicon of the system. This thesis describes the implementation of MURRAY, a learning mechanism which infers the properties of a new lexical item from its syntactical environment and infers its meaning based on context and…

Though rooted in neo-Piagetian research, constructivism is an avenue of research that departed from the neo-Piagetian mainstream 20 years ago and has continued on a distinct path of development. For constructivists, learning is not knowledge written on, or transplanted to, a person's mind as if the mind were a blank slate waiting to be written on…

This study investigated the influence of context on teachers' classroom management decisions represented by the interactive classroom management task of handling student misbehavior. A review of pertinent teacher cognition research suggests that the key to understanding classroom management involves investigation of teachers' cognitions in…

This paper explores the common elements identified as context variables that may effect student evaluation of instruction, and presents literature from sociology, anthropology, and linguistics that offers renewed challenges to researchers in this area of data interpretation. The common context variables that are seen as effecting student…

Discussion reflects on the notions of the constructionist viewpoint in development, of integration, and of individual uniqueness, by drawing on studies of mother-infant interaction, the development of 24-hour infant state organization and regulation, and life span development. The logic of construction by which an individual shapes his or her…

A total of 60 children, 20 preschoolers, 20 first-graders, and 20 third-graders, participated in a game involving communication of spatial information. Subjects gave verbal directions to help another person find a hidden object, in this case, a small toy hidden under one of a number of cups. Two experimental conditions were set up, the first…

The role of social interaction in the literacy learning of 21 children 3 and 4 years of age was investigated over a period of 8 months. Data were collected at a preschool classroom writing center, using the ethnographic techniques of participant observation, field notes, collection of written texts, as well as audio and video tapes. Patterns in…

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare kindergarten and first-grade children's performance on addition and subtraction problems presented in two contexts: verbal (in which problem data were linked to physical referents such as objects or people and their actions), and abstract (in which no such links to physical situations…

Context effects are defined as being influences on test performance associated with the content of successively presented test items or sections. Four types of context effects are identified: (1) direct context effects (practice effects) which occur when performance on items is affected by the examinee having been exposed to similar types of…