This paper reviews four studies about the nature of professional thinking among teachers, and its relationship to parents' thinking about children and education. The main question addressed in the literature was when and why individual diversity of views appears more strongly in some individuals, but uniformity appears more strongly in others. The…

This report examines the learning styles of Caucasian and African-American students. While research supports the claim that low academic achievement is prevalent in the minority community, there is no consensus regarding the causes. There are two schools of thought that involve (1) the cognitive deficit or genetic cause, and (2) the cultural…

Academic departments exert a powerful influence on students by recruitment of distinctive personality types into academic disciplines, and by a socialization process in which departments reward students for the display of attitudes in accordance with the norms of their disciplines. This study examined the differential patterns of student growth…

The school readiness goal of the America 2000 educational reform program admits that not all children start school ready to learn, but implies that with proper and adequate interventions, all children can start with the requisite cognitive and social adaptive skills that will enable them to learn. This paper discusses and analyzes critical skills…

The purpose of this book is to combine theory and research knowledge on a number of relevant topics in the literature on children's play and to draw out implications for practical application in early childhood education. The role of the adult in children's play is a major theme of the text and is informed by developmentally appropriate practice.…

This practicum was designed and implemented to increase the homework completion rate of sixth graders in English classes. Objectives were formulated to reflect a statistical increase in homework completion rate by means of calculation and analysis of a computerized gradebook. A review of the literature revealed several viable strategies to…

A study will be conducted to determine if the learning style of field dependence/independence has any effect on the cognitive outcomes and attitudes of students in a distance education class. The instructional strategies of group and individual learning will be compared to see which one results in greater learning and which one students prefer and…

This book provides an overview of ways in which the psychology of child development can improve education and promote children's competence. Part 1 of the book examines individual differences in children. Chapters in this part discuss: (1) the roots of children's competence, and particularly the influences of the environment, heredity, and…

The term "ethno-lingual relativity" is defined as a perspective that is not limited by one's own cultural and linguistic experiences, but rather is open to the contrasting cultural and linguistic patterns of other peoples. It is hypothesized that having an ethno-lingually relative perspective can facilitate one's ability to learn a new language.…

The bridging theme of the AMTEC'93 conference provided the stimulation to look beyond traditional boundaries: across international borders; across levels of disciplines and school systems; across social differences and across individual differences. These bridges can help make learning more effective, as can attention to related contemporary…

Integrating the current "state of the art" in content area reading with some new ideas, this book presents preservice and inservice teachers with theory and related teaching strategies to aid students in reading and learning from their textbooks. The book provides teachers with a comprehensive examination of content area reading to make…

This study examined whether students with learning disabilities (LD) differed from general education (NLD) students in terms of depressive symptomatology, causal attributions for success and failure, self-concept, and locus of control. Eighty-two students in grades 4, 5, and 6 participated in the study. Subjects were given the Intellectual…

This study investigated whether alcohol use by public school students differs in its relationship to other variables when analyzed on the individual level versus the aggregated group level. The study presents a model and a set of analytic techniques for studying the ways that school and individual variables relate to adolescent alcohol abuse.…

The document describes desirable practices for the education of gifted early adolescents in Virginia. It contains recommendations to assist in implementing a comprehensive plan for gifted middle-grade students compatible with state plans for overall middle school education. Research on students this age and on gifted students is cited to support…

This four-part guide is designed to help community college instructors understand and respond to individual differences in their students. First, the preface lays out a framework for an in-depth examination of individual learning differences by posing the following questions: (1) Is learning a single function or a composite of different types of…