Though rooted in neo-Piagetian research, constructivism is an avenue of research that departed from the neo-Piagetian mainstream 20 years ago and has continued on a distinct path of development. For constructivists, learning is not knowledge written on, or transplanted to, a person's mind as if the mind were a blank slate waiting to be written on…

This study investigated the influence of context on teachers' classroom management decisions represented by the interactive classroom management task of handling student misbehavior. A review of pertinent teacher cognition research suggests that the key to understanding classroom management involves investigation of teachers' cognitions in…

This paper explores the common elements identified as context variables that may effect student evaluation of instruction, and presents literature from sociology, anthropology, and linguistics that offers renewed challenges to researchers in this area of data interpretation. The common context variables that are seen as effecting student…

Discussion reflects on the notions of the constructionist viewpoint in development, of integration, and of individual uniqueness, by drawing on studies of mother-infant interaction, the development of 24-hour infant state organization and regulation, and life span development. The logic of construction by which an individual shapes his or her…

A total of 60 children, 20 preschoolers, 20 first-graders, and 20 third-graders, participated in a game involving communication of spatial information. Subjects gave verbal directions to help another person find a hidden object, in this case, a small toy hidden under one of a number of cups. Two experimental conditions were set up, the first…

The role of social interaction in the literacy learning of 21 children 3 and 4 years of age was investigated over a period of 8 months. Data were collected at a preschool classroom writing center, using the ethnographic techniques of participant observation, field notes, collection of written texts, as well as audio and video tapes. Patterns in…

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare kindergarten and first-grade children's performance on addition and subtraction problems presented in two contexts: verbal (in which problem data were linked to physical referents such as objects or people and their actions), and abstract (in which no such links to physical situations…

Context effects are defined as being influences on test performance associated with the content of successively presented test items or sections. Four types of context effects are identified: (1) direct context effects (practice effects) which occur when performance on items is affected by the examinee having been exposed to similar types of…

Study One examined Swedish and American children's understanding of what constitutes fair criteria for the distribution of goods (i.e., distributive justice). Study Two compared children's distributive justice in family and peer contexts, and Study Three attempted a longitudinal assessment of distributive justice reasoning in two different…

This paper considers the main results and some educational implications of the TIMSS 2003 assessment conducted in Serbia, in the fields of mathematics achievement of Serbian eighth grade students and the mathematics curriculum context of their achievement. It was confirmed that Serbian eighth graders have made average scale score of 477 points,…

This book attempts to take a whole school view of approaches to making learning central, so that staffing and structures, external links and resources, are all dealt with in examining ways in which learning schools can evolve. The belief is that unless every aspect of a school's life is put under scrutiny, an emphasis on learning will remain an…

In this paper we document the importance of institutional context in both constraining and enabling the work of mathematics teachers. We build from our current and ongoing collaborative efforts with middle-grades mathematics teachers to provide an analytic approach and resulting analysis that clarifies the critical role of institutional context in…

Researchers are aware that grouping students by prior knowledge may result in moderate gains in intermediate grade students' mathematics achievement. Despite this research, many teachers continue to teach the way they were taught: one curriculum for all students regardless of students' readiness. Additionally, researchers have raised concerns…

The effects of various college preparation programs, class ranking, and student background characteristics on college retention were studied. The data were obtained from the National Education Longitudinal Study:1988-2000 and NELS:88/2000 Postsecondary Education Transcript Study. The sample contained 4,445 first-time freshmen students who enrolled…

Many theoretical explanations for knowledge transfer or generalization assume that such processes are rooted in the acquisition of abstract rules, principles, or schemata applicable in context-independent ways. This case study is part of a larger research program examining how what often appears to be generalized knowledge or performance is, in…