Explores aboriginal discourse styles in a public context, their presentation of knowledge and experience through stories, and the mismatch between discourse styles of aboriginal people and what is expected in classrooms. (MM)

Discusses prison education in Great Britain and reports on a study of Open University prison tutors that investigated tutorial relationships, student characteristics, and contextual features. Highlights include research on prison education; the Open University/Home Office Scheme that arranged prison education; and an appendix that shows course…

Provides suggestions for incorporating multicultural diversity issues into the graduate library science curriculum. Topics discussed include questions of context; demographic shifts; creating curricular activities, including guest lecturers and encouraging behavioral as well as cognitive changes; and student responses, including student…

Three fundamentally different uses are described for classroom cases: (1) as instructional tools to help novice teachers connect theory and practice and develop problem-solving skills; (2) as raw data for research on teacher cognition; and (3) as catalysts to promote change in teachers' beliefs and practices. (SLD)

Paper explores the idea of biography writing as a medium for teacher development and reflection, focusing on the ethnographic biography to provide student teachers with context in preservice education and describing a one-semester course in Switzerland in which student teachers were paired with experienced teachers to complete ethnographic…

The Adolescents' Media Practice Model is proposed and discussed. The model emphasizes a dialectical process in which the media are important cultural agents with influence on audiences that is amplified and restrained by individuals who interact with the media from their own positions. The model is grounded in "room culture." (SLD)

The specification and estimation of school effects, the variability of effects across schools, and the proportion of variation in student outcomes attributable to differences in school context and practice are considered. A statistical model is presented that defines school effects for parents choosing a school and for agencies evaluating school…

Explores the relationships of emotion, cognition, and inner speech to each other and to context in a classroom of 24 fifth-grade students. Results of interviews and observations suggest the necessity of understanding adaptive behavior in context, understanding the role of context in determining cognitive and emotional responses, and understanding…

Changes in political and social attitudes during college were studied for 303 Ivy League students in their freshman and senior years. Seniors scored higher on measures of liberalism, social conscience, tolerance of homosexuality, and feminist attitudes; they scored lower on male-dominant attitudes. Of particular interest is the increased tolerance…

The value of the social context present in some specialized education environments to promote the optimal development of children who are gifted and talented is discussed. Issues and variables that might be considered when conducting research on social context in specialized environments are also considered. (SW)

Studies of the relationship between students' propositional knowledge (as measured by concept mapping tasks) and their study strategies (as measured by self-report questionnaires) for electricity in first-year university courses are described. The effect of propositional knowledge and prior knowledge on both conceptual knowledge and study…

Task-related and social behaviors of preschool children (n=21) at risk for behavior problems were examined in two school settings, a structured instructional context and an unstructured free play context. Results indicated that group differences in on-task, aggressive, and prosocial behavior depended on context. (Author/DB)

Argues that false assumptions about user needs implicit in methodologies for building information systems have resulted in inadequate and inflexible systems. Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology is examined as a useful alternative. Its fundamental features are described, and examples of models demonstrate how the methodology can facilitate…

Advocates research on the effectiveness of early intervention programs for disabled children based on scientific method, rather than advocacy of positions. Reviews effective intervention practices. Illustrates use of the biosocial systems research model, examining biological traits in the context of social systems. Discusses benefits of this…

Argues that the shared use of artifacts is supported by latent border resources that lie beyond the canonical artifact. Designers must understand the role border resources play and work more directly to help users develop them. This will require designers to change their understanding of artifacts and users. (Contains 69 references.) (KRN)