Children who live in poverty are frequently at risk for underachievement. This is not to say that poverty automatically causes lack of achievement, but being poor can certainly take its toll. Gifted low income students can be compared to diamonds, which can only be formed under conditions of extreme heat and pressure. Both diamonds and…

Guided by the theoretical and empirical research on self-efficacy and outcome expectancy beliefs, and the "Culturally Responsive Teaching Competencies" [Siwatu, K.O. (2006a). "The development of the culturally responsive teaching competencies: Implications for teacher education." Manuscript under review], two measures--the…

Background: Early research exploring teacher expectations concentrated on the dyadic classroom interactions of teachers with individual students. More recent studies have shown whole class factors to have more significance in portraying teachers' expectations. Recently teachers having high or low expectations for all their students have been…

Although current policy debate on school restructuring is centered on choice, empowerment, and professionalization issues, the effects of communally organized schools has received little attention. This paper postulates that student achievement, particularly in mathematics, is related to selected elements of communal schools (shared norms and…

Given that people's expectations influence their behavior, it is important to examine the expectations of incoming college freshman whose beliefs and hopes may help to determine their academic and social integration, which have been linked to persistence and retention rates. Of 212 African American freshman who completed the "University New…

If ever there ever was an unsung heroine in journalism, it was LaBerta Miller Phillips, who taught journalism and advised student publications at Fort Worth's segregated I.M. Terrell High School from 1922 to 1966. When asked how she was farsighted enough to be teaching journalism all those years when there were few jobs open to blacks in the…

Expectancy-valence models are used most in the field of motivational psychology. However, teachers' motivation had not been studied by these models and only limited research exists assessing the expectancy and the valence constructs. This study's aim was to examine preservice teachers' and practicing teachers' motivation by the expectancy-valence…

This paper reports the perceptions about students and the personal experiences of 23 faculty who served as preceptors for 32 undergraduate African American and other students of color and minority ethnic groups who participated in a 10-week, summer research program for high-achieving students. Each faculty member preselected the student that they…

This pilot study on international relocation examined the adjustment experiences of 68 children, age 9 to 11 years, who relocated to Vienna, Austria either from their native country or from another overseas setting. The study proposed an additive model of adjustment which took into account potential sources of adjustment within the relocation…

Self-monitoring refers to deliberate attention to aspects of one's behavior, and is an important component of self-regulated learning, which depends on favorable self-evaluations of one's capabilities and progress toward learning goals. This paper argues that self-regulated learning is enhanced when students self-monitor their learning progress,…

Research for Better Schools, Inc., Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) is engaged in an effort to put meaning behind the words "all children can learn" by charting guidelines for the work it takes to change urban education. The result is a decision-making strategy, the Urban Learner Framework (ULF), which focuses on the education or teaching and…

Females' underperformance in mathematics is discussed as a function of negative expectancies by parents, teachers, and peers. These negative expectancies of significant others lead to negative self-expectancies and negative attitudes about mathematics on the part of female students. These negative expectancies and attitudes lead to lower…

This paper presents a Five-Styles Teacher Discipline Model for helping teachers manage discipline. The model was developed based on a study of 120 teachers from a public school district in northeast Illinois. The students in the two participating urban schools were predominantly African American and from a lower socioeconomic status. Data were…

This study investigated how obtaining predicted and actual scores on aptitude tests can provide crucial information regarding personal beliefs about ability. The ACID profile of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Revised) (WAIS-R) was used to collect the subjective and objective scores of 92 college students with severe scholastic deficits…

This paper is based on a year-long inquiry into the possibility of democratic education in traditional environments. The study was guided by the questions: (1) what are the teacher qualities needed to transcend the structures of schooling to engage in democratic practices?; and (2) how are these practices manifested in the classroom? The…