What is educational leadership? Why should individuals care about it? How does it work? What forms might it take? Which leadership practices are useful in almost all contexts? Which are context-specific? What are the sources of successful leadership? These questions--addressed in this paper--are questions presently of concern to a growing number…

This paper details the efforts of four organizations that have been able to negotiate their environments effectively, in the hopes that the analysis provides insights into how organizations are able to establish valuable learning environments for youth in nonschool hours. The negotiation, the process of dealing with various layers of environments…

Poverty rates are highest in the most urban and most rural areas of the United States, and are higher in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan areas. Yet, perhaps because only one-fifth of the nation's 35 million poor people live in nonmetropolitan areas, rural poverty has received less attention than urban poverty from both policymakers and…

Students who take developmental psychology courses have difficulty applying theoretical concepts to situations separate from the context of theory. When learning about Piagetian theory, students often confine their understanding to demonstrations of conservation tasks. Analyzing Card Games, an active learning activity, allows students to apply the…

Examines whether young children and adults are able to interpret sarcastic utterances and whether placements of contextual information before or after the utterance differentially affect interpretation. Results obtained from first and third graders and from college students indicated that different placements of contextual information do affect…

The focus of the present experiments was to examine the effect of adapting the context of a presentation to a student's background. The results showed familiarity of context to be an influential factor in learning quantitative material. (Author/PN)

Argues that Firth and Wagner are justified in arguing that a broader, context-sensitive, participant-sensitive, generally sociolinguistic orientation might prove beneficial for second language acquisition research. Demonstrates a skepticism as to whether greater insights into second language learning will necessarily influence the process. (13…

Examines the indirect strategies applied in the relationship between power and language, with particular reference to Eastern (Asian) verbal context. Argues that indirectness is both a form of politeness where a speaker avoids expressing himself explicitly and a style of formulating speech acts, which has an inherent pragmatic role. (32…

This pilot study of a project involving the design and making of a moisture sensor indicated that science knowledge developed through science lessons could not be used in technology lessons. This is argued to be because knowledge is constructed in the various contexts and hence not generalizable. Implications for science and technology teaching…

Production of the morpheme BE was studied among 22 children (ages 4-5) with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Contractible contexts were produced more accurately than uncontractible contexts by both groups, and there were no significant interactions between language status and contractibility. Copula forms were produced more…

Examines student perspectives about the principal from an intentionist perspective, focusing on shared unconscious and conscious images and representations. Provides a metaphorical analysis of "student mentality" as an institutionalized reality and identifies social networks and school contexts sustaining its construction. Suggests that…

Used Smilansky and Parten/Piaget play measures to assess social class and sex differences in Singapore preschoolers' play at home and preschool centers. Found that parallel and functional play were higher at home than in centers and associative/cooperative play was higher in centers than homes. Smilansky scores were higher at centers than homes,…

Examined the impact of early maternal interactive behaviors on children's symbolic play. Found that an option-promoting context in mother-infant dyads coexisted with the child's exhibition of symbolic play at 18 months and at 40 months. This context was stable between the two ages. An options-limiting interactive context at 40 months correlated…

Examines the perception of flaming (hostile verbal behavior) in electronic mail by exploring, in the context of five escalating levels of socioemotional intensity, the effects of pictographs (typographic symbols used to express emotion) and quoting. Results suggest pictographs and quoting can vary in perceived intensity and meaning, depending on…

A study of 90 children in third, fourth, and fifth grade investigated the students' ability to detect the idioms embedded in 12 humorous items and their ability to explain the idioms. Results showed that idiom comprehension improved significantly between the ages of 8 and 11 years and that idiom detection was easier than idiom explanation. (CR)