This phenomenological study of school consolidation is an investigation of how education policy that dictates the reorganization of schools and districts impacts educational choices, learning environments, and school culture. Although quality studies of optimal school size for promoting student achievement and cutting costs have emerged in the…

This study is based on a stage-by-stage dialogue between four geography staff and seven students. Members of staff were asked to identify issues that reflect academically inappropriate behaviour in classes for students at university (as opposed to school) level. Students were then asked to comment on the staff's views. In general, the students…

This study examined the influence of high school teachers' perceptions and individual difference characteristics on teachers' use of motivating strategies in their classrooms. Participants were 75 teachers in 19 rural, public high schools. A mixed method approach was used. Quantitative measures included demographics, individual differences,…

This paper examines the issue of social structure and individual agency in language learning through the life histories of three young engineering graduates in Hong Kong. English is identified as an important form of cultural capital, which to a considerable extent determines the development of the three individuals, each of whom comes from a…

This study considered the effects of trait emotional intelligence (trait EI; Petrides & Mavroveli, 2007) and sociobiographical variables (age, gender, education level, number of languages known, age of onset of acquisition, context of acquisition, frequency of use, socialization, network of interlocutors, self-perceived proficiency) on…

This article provides an overview of a set of articles in this special issue that synthesize current research and provide future directions for research, both conceptually and methodologically, on gender, socioeconomic, and language-minority differences in college transitions, as well as a review of college transitions research in the discipline…

Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which the quality of parent-child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youths experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Nonetheless, there is relatively little…

How to Differentiate Learning provides guidance for schools and districts to start or improve the effort to differentiate instruction. Based on what educators know about the differences among children they teach, and based on what is known of brain research, teachers must find and embrace ways to differentiate curriculum, assessment and entry…

Career interests and self-efficacy (using J. L. Holland's realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional types for both) and the big five personality dimensions (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) were used to predict college students' career exploration behaviors approximately 18…

The communication of four children with autistic spectrum disorder was investigated when they were supplied with a speech-generating device (SGD) in three different activities in their home environment: mealtime, story reading and "sharing experiences of the preschool day". An activity based communication analysis, in which collective and…

It is accepted that formative assessment can lead to gains in attainment. Although claims have also been made that these techniques bring benefits in terms of self-esteem and motivation, the evidence here is limited. This article reports an exploratory study which focused on formative assessment techniques and primary children's views of…

Effort on homework has a profound impact on student achievement. Researchers typically use an interindividual research design to explain homework effort. In this study with a total of 511 students from Grades 8 and 9, an interindividual perspective (focus on between-students differences) was combined with an intraindividual perspective (focus on…

An alternating treatments design was used to assess the effects of a constant time delay (CTD) procedure and a cover-copy-compare (CCC) procedure on three students' acquisition, subsequent maintenance, and adaptation (i.e., application) of acquired spelling words to reading passages. Students were randomly presented two trials of word lists from…

Despite calls for greater agreement in defining the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), terms that resemble SoTL are proliferating. An NSF-sponsored center for teaching and learning coined its own term, "teaching-as-research" (TAR), believing it would resonate better with research-active scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. To…

Bloomfield's "Linguistics as a Science" (1930/1970), "Language" (1933/1961), and "Language or Ideas?" (1936a/1970), and Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957) and "Science and Human Behavior" (1953) were analyzed in regard to their respective perspectives on science and scientific method, the verbal episode, meaning, and subject matter. Similarities…