Electronic portfolios allow students to include video, images, hyperlinks, and audio, along with written texts, to create varied and comprehensive representations of what they have accomplished. Such collections of information also change the ways that teachers and students choose to present themselves and the ways that we read these presentations…

This second edition of "Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe" contains 44 indicators in five chapters entitled "Context," "Organisation," "Participation," "Teachers" and "Teaching Processes." It has been produced in collaboration with Eurostat and belongs to the "Key…

This study represents further work into the area of what specific processes determine whether a sibling relationship will be positive or negative. Specifically addressed was the influence of each child's personality or temperament in shaping the quality and type of sibling relationship. Significant attention was paid to analyzing sibling…

This study sought to examine why peer interaction can facilitate learning, with the hypothesis that collaborative learning provides a social context that is conducive to the generating of explanations (an activity positively associated with learning). Individualistic and collaborative learning contexts were compared for 96 college students (19…

An integrative causal process model of evaluation utilization variables is presented. The model was developed through a traditional approach to literature review that lists results from published studies and relates these to the research topic, and through an approach that tries to integrate the models found in the literature search. Meta-modeling…

Theories about, methods of studying, and definitions of family have undergone profound shifts over the last several decades, and change continues to characterize developmental research on family functioning. In the 1990s, researchers have recognized the need for more descriptive studies as well as more process-oriented work. Research is beginning…

This study examined the impact of play context on the speech of mothers and children. It was expected that the types of speech produced by both children and mothers when they played with toys that involve fine motor manipulation would differ from the speech produced when they played with toys that involve gross motor play. Sixteen children (eight…

This paper argues that both the place of research in graduate education and the conception of research inculcated in students have changed and that research among graduate students has become a "luxurious necessity." The paper considers: (1) the traditional role of research in doctoral education; (2) the changing nature of student finances and…

This paper describes an ethnographic study of school and community characteristics affecting the literacy development of Navajo children, and provides an overview of sociocultural factors in the literacy environment of one Navajo community. The researcher was a principal at Pinon Public School District #4 in Pinon, Arizona, in the heart of the…

The paper is a methodological inquiry into the interpretation of qualitative data. It explores a grounded-theory approach to the synthesis of data and examines, in particular, the construction of categories. It focuses on ways of organizing and attaching meaning to data, as research problems embedded in a cultural context are explored. A…

The importance of considering social contexts--workplace, family, and community networks--in devising adult literacy programs has emerged over the past decade as the clear consensus of adult literacy research. Equally important have been the attempts by field researchers and federal policymakers to use these findings in setting up demonstration…

The purpose of this study was to investigate a possible link between differences in parents' reactions to conflict involving their children and their children's older peers or siblings, and differences in their children's self-monitoring level. It was hypothesized that children who were high in self-monitoring would come from environments in which…

Contextualized instruction (also referenced as anchor instruction) is teaching a skill within a specific or functional context known as a target setting. The purpose of this approach is to teach transfer or generalization of a skill in order to increase the likelihood that what is taught in the training or classroom setting will be used in future…

Because of increased emphasis on accountability, program evaluations today must go beyond measures of change in program participants to consider the effects, either direct or indirect, of staff development on students and their learning. A model is presented illustrating the relationship between staff development for teachers and student learning…

Within the field of child welfare a style of practice has evolved among social workers in small communities and rural areas that captures some of the essential elements of case management, prevention, and early intervention. The practice style represents an adaption to contextual factors in rural areas which include: (1) greater geographic…