Gender differences in item-specific confidence judgments were studied for 70 male and 181 female college students. Gender differences in confidence were dependent on context and the domain being tested. Both men and women were overconfident, but men were especially overconfident when incorrect. (SLD)

Addresses the theme of the 1995 TESOL Convention: "Building Our Futures Together." The article argues that we face dilemmas when clashes develop between different sets of values, for example, the political values dominating the workplace and the cultural values affecting social interaction. The article then sketches a preferred vision of…

Examines the cross-linguistic influence of native language topic-prominence in shaping and accenting the written English discourse produced by Chinese learners. The article endeavors to demonstrate that this interlingual discourse does not meet the criteria for adequate coherence in written English discourse. (22 references) (Author/CK)

Argues for the adoption of a literacy pedagogy to enable tertiary level students from different language backgrounds to access expository text. The article describes the outcomes of a project exploring whether college freshmen from different language backgrounds had appropriate strategies and awareness levels to understand and retain ideas from…

Case vignettes of teachers at work illustrate ways to conceptualize and represent the voices of teachers in educational research. More comparative and contextualized studies of teachers' voices would avoid romanticizing them, something that often happens when teachers' voices are presented in isolation from other voices. (SLD)

Dutch researchers used the Teachers' and Principals' Sense of Efficacy scale to examine the context dependency of elementary teachers' and principals' sense of efficacy. Results advance self-efficacy as an important factor in explaining the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. (SM)

The case study of a community relations program in Northern Ireland demonstrates the importance of contextual variables and illustrates that the demands of short-term, context-stripped, value-for-money evaluations are often in conflict with qualitative inquiries that can reveal the social, political, and cultural influences on program delivery.…

Participant observations and key informant interviews were used in three case studies, each case corresponding to a different degree of researcher involvement in a Canadian school district's participatory evaluation. The contextual differences observed are discussed, and the usefulness of the approach to studying evaluation methods is described.…

Describes and analyzes how context acts as a resource for and a constraint upon the personal experience narratives of educators. Examines a teacher's story told in a support group for democratic educators. Illustrates the role that context has on storytelling, how teacher-narrators interpret/act upon context, and how context constrains a story.…

Reconceptualizes the role of the professional playleader, taking into account the contexts of children's development. Describes the growth of adventure playgrounds and playleadership in Europe. Discusses the responsibilities and attributes of the playleader, focusing on advocating for children's right to play. (KB)

A study examined how languages affect memory for narrative. Forty bilingual children aged 8-9 listened to a story in either English or Greek, and then retold it in English or Greek. Unexpectedly, children who heard the story in English and retold it in Greek had significantly better story recall than other groups. Educational implications are…

Surveys African American families (N=841) to test hypothesis that community context might influence the association between parent control and punishment on child conduct problems. Survey found the deterrent effect of caretaker control on conduct problems became smaller as deviant behavior became more widespread. Results suggest that a particular…

Suggests that the study of memory needs to be situated within broader conceptual and research contexts. Examines how four contexts accommodate memory phenomena: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension; (3) context/function; and (4) strategy. Suggests that memories are best examined as knowledge structures resulting from efforts to understand, and that…

Argues that extant research assessing relations between contextual factors and psychological disturbance has confused two different roles of context. Suggests that environmental factors are nonspecific stressors and elicit psychopathology, with specificity of expressed psychopathology governed by individual differences, and that context is…

Discusses the differences between objectified and interpretive approaches to context. Suggests that in information needs and seeking research (INS), the former approach has been more common. One way of understanding INS phenomena is to define them as patterns of behavior; another way is to understand them as phenomena mediated by social and…