In a 3-year longitudinal, mixed-method study, 67 children in two schools were observed during literacy activities in Grades 1-3. Children and their teachers were interviewed each year about the children's motivation to read and write. Taking a grounded theory approach, content analysis of the child interview protocols identified the motivations…

Rather than viewing youth as an isolated and alienated subculture, it is more useful to view the needs of youth as largely determined by where and how they live, and to recognize that they differ from one another just as adults do. Professionals and volunteers in community youth programs need to understand how the youth they work with experience…

This collection of essays illustrates various aspects of the recent trend to situate accounts of cognitive development. The essays examine contextual sensitivity in relation to ecological theories of perception and cognition, and contrast intuitive reasoning in mathematical and other scientific domains with the child's difficulty with reasoning in…

Middle school prealgebra students (n=157) learned about functions in a 20-day unit that emphasized: (1) representing problems in multiple formats, (2) anchoring learning in a meaningful thematic context, and (3) discussing problem-solving processes in cooperative groups. They produced smaller pretest-to-posttest gains on symbol manipulation tasks,…

This paper analyzes principles of knowledge diffusion and provides a framework for applying new ideas or innovations, particularly in relation to rural community development. As new knowledge is created or old knowledge is found to have new applications, the art of spreading knowledge and managing innovation has become more crucial in both urban…

This monograph describes elementary teacher education in South Korea and aspects of Korean society that have contributed to the uniqueness of this educative process. Within the context of comparative education, the essay introduces the cultural, social, and institutional attributes of Korea; discusses specifics of the educative process as a…

This report examines the lessons emerging from the experiences of 19 residential colleges and universities that received grants as part of the Ford Foundations's Campus Diversity Initiative to implement institutional change with regards to the issue of inequalities and exclusions existing in the nation and on its campuses. After an introductory…

Through a series of focus group interviews, 63 students at George Mason University (Virginia) related their academic and student life experiences. The goal of the researchers was to find a means of reporting the findings in a way that retained the integrity of the contextual data (student voices) and maximized audience impact. Three ways of…

This paper argues that because there is no meaningful distinction between care and education for young children, the early childhood field should be renamed "early childhood educare." The concept of educare recognizes that children's thinking develops through joint interactions with others in responsive social contexts. The predominant…

The "Thinking Mathematics" approach to teaching is guided by two ideas: (1) that learning requires knowledge upon which new problems and situations are interpreted and (2) that mathematics skills are applied in context. This paper reports research that examined whether teaching mathematics students in high school remedial classes can be…

An exploratory study was conducted to evaluate a model that predicts a five-step developmental sequence from dualistic to systematic conceptions of racism among young white adults. The model predicts developmental changes for white middle-class young adults within the context of a college cultural-diversity course. The following steps in…

This paper describes the context of education at two Appalachian middle schools and examines family, community, and school factors related to the academic success of economically disadvantaged and middle-class students. The 429 students at two rural middle schools in Appalachian Kentucky and Tennessee were assigned to low socioeconomic status…

Conflicts or disagreements between student teachers and university supervisors in the Extended Practicum program, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, are often attributed to factors such as "personality clash," laziness, stubbornness, authoritarianism, prejudice, stereotyping, dogmatism, or malice. In reality, many of these…

This paper explores the dynamic nature of the power relationship within social research, concentrating on the production and reproduction of a text of the field and focusing on the processes of recording, writing, and reading. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in a United Kingdom office of an international firm of chartered accountants…

This policy brief presents excerpts from an article by Judith Warren Little that addresses the problem of the "fit" between current state and local reforms and prevailing approaches to professional development. The brief addresses first five major themes of reform and their implications for teaching. These themes are: reforms in subject…