This book reviews the contemporary state of knowledge on developmental transitions between 5 and 7 years. Contributions are: (1) "Interpreting Developmental Transitions" (Arnold Sameroff; Marshall Haith); (2) "The Child's Entry into the 'Age of Reason'" (Sheldon White); (3) "Is There a Neural Basis for Cognitive…

This theme issue of a Texas journal focuses on gifted education and culturally diverse students. "Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Students in Gifted Education" (Donna Y. Ford and J. John Harris) discusses the challenges of recruiting diverse students in gifted education and presents solutions, including using different measurements of…

Measuring student progress toward higher achievement has been the purpose of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since its inception in 1969. Students in both public and nonpublic schools have been assessed in various subject areas on a regular basis. This report presents results of the 1994 NAEP trend assessments in science,…

A study examined the impact of limited English competence on participation of foreign female students in technical cooperation training (TCT). Questionnaires were sent to British Council offices and embassies in all 107 countries with TCT programs and completed by 55 (30.9%) of the countries (including 17 of the 22 largest). Responses indicated…

Concerned with different types of parents and the forces that shape parenting, this volume, the first of four volumes on parenting deals specifically with parent-child relationships throughout the lifespan and the parenting of children of different physical, behavioral, and intellectual needs. The volume consists of 12 chapters as follows: (1)…

This 3-year study examined how 10 Chinese-American families from various socioeconomic and educational backgrounds fostered their children's success in school through personal, family, ethnic community, and mainstream community resources, focusing on the experiences of two particular families. The study grouped the families into three types: (1)…

In this conference proceedings the overarching theme of research on teaching and learning mathematics in diverse settings and the subthemes of diversity, constructivism and algebra are achieved in the plenary papers. The plenary papers and authors include "Constructivist, Emergent, and Sociocultural Perspectives in the Context of Developmental…

This paper reanalyzed data from the classic 1966 study "Equality of Educational Opportunity," or "Coleman Report." It addressed the issue of whether teacher characteristics, including verbal ability and race, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus…

This study examined how middle science teachers perceive the textbooks they use and how their perceptions varied with their personal attributes and professional backgrounds. A questionnaire was sent to 79 middle school science teachers in Missouri, and 66 responded. The questionnaire was designed to determine the teachers' perceptions about the…

This book presents a collection of essays that reflect the experiences of educators who have responded to the challenges of cultural diversity on their campuses or within their educational regions. Essays examine instructional strategies, curriculum issues, and creating the climate for change. Essay titles and their authors are as follows:…

Boys' reluctance to participate in music education programs, particularly in school singing groups -- termed in this paper the "missing males" problem -- is just one among many pressing gender problems in music education. In order to discover whether boys' lack of participation in music, along with other gender-related issues, are merely…

Narrative accounts construct and reconstruct stories of school experiences in order to make meaning of them. This document reports the results of narrative inquiry in the mathematics experiences of 7 women and 15 eighth-grade girls in an effort to determine why women and girls avoid mathematics. Memories and reflections were gathered using…

This paper examines the teacher research movement from feminist perspectives of achieving gender equity and social change in schools. The paper presents the personal experiences of two middle-class, Caucasian, women professors and teacher educators in their 40s, in a dialogue between the two. The paper discusses the complex role of women's values,…

The purpose of this study is to investigate science achievement of Australian students and how this achievement can vary from school to school. The proposition that gender and socioeconomic inequities in Australia are the result of school systems designed to reproduce an unequal social order is be examined with reference both to current…

Research in the teaching of second/foreign languages has called for an emphasis on interactional competence, or the ability to think and behave as an interactional partner in a second language. The aim of this paper is to find out if the specific interactional skills acquired by students through their first language experience are automatically…