In this review the author explores whether school management councils (SMCs) reproduce prevailing norms of social participation or serve as a lever for change by challenging these norms and creating opportunities for subdominant groups to participate, thus enabling parents to take part in decision-making. The analysis highlights examples from…

An important outcome of Singapore's education system is the development of creative thinking skills. This project investigates the impact of a creative dance unit on a class of Primary One (seven-year-old) children's usage of bodily kinaesthetic intelligence to solve problems. One key objective was for the researchers to observe something new,…

This study examined the influence of mentor's status (supervisor vs. non-supervisor) and gender similarity (homogeneous vs. diversified) of mentor-protege dyads on protege's perception of mentoring functions and outcomes. We collected and analyzed data from 217 mentor-protege dyads comprised of working professionals from a variety of industries.…

This article reports the results of a content analysis of the debut season of the reality television show, "The Apprentice." All 15 episodes were examined to determine the role that communication competencies played in competitors' success or elimination. Results indicate that the ability to persuade effectively was most critical to winning tasks,…

In this paper I am concerned with the challenge workplace learners and educators face, as they engage with global economies, to create "a world in common as . . . known in common" (Smith 1999). I focus first on why global companies need their geographically dispersed workers to engage with a world "in common", and how they go about constructing…

Purpose: This study examined the cognitive demands of 2 selection techniques in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), direct selection, and visual linear scanning, by determining the memory retrieval abilities of typically developing children when presented with fixed communication displays. Method: One hundred twenty typical children…

Auditory event-related potentials (mismatch negativity and P300) and behavioral discrimination were measured to synthetically generated consonant-vowel (CV) speech and nonspeech contrasts in 10 young adults with normal auditory systems. Previous research has demonstrated that behavioral and P300 responses reflect a phonetic, categorical level of…

Trends dating from the 1970s show that males are significantly less likely than females to attend college and to remain in higher education once enrolled. Although this gender imbalance is undisputed, there is little agreement about the causes of the disparity and even less solid research to guide policy. Educators nowadays still wonder why young…

In educational settings, computers provide specific possibilities of visualizing information for instructional purposes. Besides the use of static pictures, computers can present animated pictures which allow exploratory manipulation by the learner and display the dynamic behavior of a system. This paper develops a theoretical framework for…

A study investigated the role of the interpreter in doctor-patient communication by analyzing four complete medical interviews at a large urban hospital, each involving one of two Russian interpreters on staff. Both interpreters were native Russian speakers recently immigrated to the United States. Patients were middle-aged and elderly immigrants…

A study analyzed the discourse in a variety of Hong Kong newspapers to assess how an individual takes on the role of reader in relation to the rather complex public discourse of a daily newspaper, particularly in a multicultural, politically charged context. Four categories of newspaper (Hong Kong English, Hong Kong Chinese, non-Hong Kong Chinese,…

A survey examined perceptions among superintendents, principals, and special education administrators concerning the role of the special education administrator in West Virginia school systems. All 55 county school superintendents, all 55 district-level special education administrators, and 150 public school principals were sent a survey…

Presented in a question-and-answer format, this guide is designed to answer the questions of persons who have agreed to become mentors for students in school-to-work programs. The guide answers the following 12 questions: (1) Why am I here? (2) What is mentoring all about? (3) What does mentoring have to do with School-to-Work? (4) Where do I fit…

A study investigated how different combinations of background color, text brightness and text color in Chinese CAI (computer assisted instruction) software programs may influence the affection, perception, and cognition of elementary school students in Taiwan. A sample size of 332 was drawn from the sixth-grade students of 2 elementary schools.…

The concept of shape often enters introductory cultural geography textbooks through the subject of political geography. This paper focuses on a quantitative way to introduce the concept of shape to students of cultural geography. The measure used in this approach was to compare the perimeter of the sovereign state with the perimeter of a circle…