Kindergarten marks a new beginning for parent and child, and presents challenges for parents as their child makes the transition from home to school. This handbook provides a description of what parents can expect of their child's kindergarten program in Alberta, Canada. It describes how young children learn, how learning is assessed, and how…

A study investigated the effects of home language and some bilingual instructional practices on language minority or bilingual secondary students' learning of English as a second language. Subjects were 17 teachers and their students from 12 secondary schools in an urban school district with a high Hispanic enrollment. Teachers were observed for…

Noting that more democratic values have begun to replace authoritarian values in the classroom, this book offers teachers three different discipline styles and provides guidance in classroom management, discipline strategy, and flexible problem solving. Chapter 1 of the book addresses general discipline and provides debate on utilizing democratic…

Non-traditional learners, adult learners who are age 21 or older, have many obstacles to overcome in their quest for knowledge. This paper investigates affective forces that influence non-traditional learners in a traditional computer lab and in a satellite-delivered instructional setting. Study participants consisted of 58 graduate and…

Emphasizing that language arts and reading are "binding agents" for all kinds of learning and should be integrated throughout the elementary curriculum, the guiding philosophy of this book is that the best teachers are those who continue to learn along with their students. Each chapter in the book ends with a "Teacher as…

Developed in response to requests from public school providers to the Massachusetts Department of Education for technical assistance, this publication offers guidance on how best to care for and educate young children whose first language is other than English and/or who are from diverse cultural backgrounds. The question and answer format…

This book on students with behavior disorders is intended to serve as a resource on intervention strategies for regular education teachers, administrators, and support personnel. After an introductory chapter, a chapter on classroom climate considers setting limits, safety, trust, acceptance, and sense of purpose. The next chapter, on scheduling,…

The objective of this study was to begin to examine middle school classrooms for examples of either gender equity or gender bias. Data were collected by visiting 80 classes in 10 middle schools in central Connecticut. Classes observed included 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes in social studies, mathematics, science, language arts, foreign language,…

This study examined the effect of formal instruction on the acquisition of three grammatical structures (simple past tense, present perfect, and passive construction) by Chinese adolescent learners of English. Comparison focused on the effects of two methods: explicit formal and implicit formal instruction. In the explicit method, students are…

This case study, one of four, is part of a larger study, "Ethnographic Case Studies of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) of At-Risk Students in Middle School Classrooms." The study provides relevant case literature regarding CRP for the enhancement of preservice teacher education and describes the characteristics of a multicultural…

The focus of this monograph is on the distinctions between questions addressed in research on teaching and issues of concern in teacher education and on the interplay of curricular, contextual, and pedagogical issues in both public schools and university settings. The publication is organized into seven chapters: (1) "Action Research and the Work…

American children do not bring uniform characteristics to the school setting. The at-risk student actually learns, behaves, and thinks differently from the student considered ideally suited to traditional programming. The poor "fit" between the at-risk students' natural characteristics and the expectations of the traditional school…

In 1991, staff at the Business Resource Center (BRC) at Tacoma Community College, in Washington, began to reevaluate their approach to serving students. Up to that point, the BRC had been teacher centered, with staff operating under the assumptions that only the students who succeeded were actually "college material," that students would cheat if…

Based on a long-term comparative ethnographic study in two Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) public schools, the study reported here describes what two teachers do to create successful learning contexts for the biliterate development of linguistic minority children in their classes. Two classrooms situated in contrasting community, program, and language…

An assessment of two pilot accelerated schools using the inquiry process model for the transformation of school culture and classroom practices in serving at-risk students is presented in this report. The inquiry process is a central feature of the accelerated school, a comprehensive school renewal initiative. The traditional approach to changing…