A sample of 80 families with a 2- or 3-year-old child in day care in one of four popular forms (baby sitter in the child's own home, family day care, part-time nursery program, and full-time day care center program) participated in a study of the effects of forms of care on children's development. Parents and caretakers were interviewed, and…

In advocating written literacy through visual literacy, this paper presents an overview of supporting theory and evidence and demonstrates practical application through visual compositions. The research reported in the first section of the paper includes the general theoretical stance of writing-as-process educators, who believe that the…

This study investigated the influence of student and classroom characteristics on a sample of 17-year-old students' (N=1955) inquiry ability. The sample was obtained from a 1981/1982 national assessment in science carried out by the Minnesota Science Assessment and Research Project. Specific areas addressed included: (1) the effectiveness of the…

During 1975-1979 this research into the potential of computerized adaptive testing to reduce errors in the measurement of human capabilities used Marine recruits for a live-testing validity comparison of computerized adaptive and conventional tests. The program purposes were to: (1) identify the most useful computer-based adaptive testing…

Each year thousands of students entering college participate in credit by examination programs in an effort to qualify for exemption and in many cases college credit for general education core requirements. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between students who participate in a credit by examination program (in this case…

A study was conducted to examine the associations among the processes, skills, and content of the writing of children aged 9 through 14 years. A further objective was to explore the impact of developmetal changes by comparing the performance of children at the 9-10, 11-12, and 13-14 year age-levels. Subjects were 340 average students and 268…

The aim of this study was to investigate the strategies leading to test item responses in 60 young (20-25 years) and 60 middle-aged (35-40 years) adults, whose highest level of education had been either secondary, technical or university. Subjects were individually administered a 12 item test similar to Raven's Progressive Matrices, and were…

By identifying speculations concerning cognitive abilities and cognition's relation to culture, this paper outlines some of the work surrounding basic writers and speaking-writing relationships. Beginning with a discussion of the differences between speaking and writing popularized by Mina Shaughnessy, the paper goes on to examine studies that…

During the summer of 1983, 77 community college students enrolled in English composition courses were administered the Nelson Denny Test during the first week of the summer session and just prior to final examinations to: determine reading ability and grade equivalences in reading; ascertain if there were relationships between academic achievement…

Sentence-combining exercises improve the psycholinguistic abilities of students developmentally ready to profit from them, by developing language skills used in the writing process. (JH)

Problems in the use of pupil achievement measures for evaluating teachers, schools or systems are reviewed, with the conclusion that they are disabling. The following reasons are cited: (1) What the pupil brings to the classroom in terms of ability, previous knowledge, home and peer influence, motivation, and other influences is clearly very…

There is no conclusive evidence as yet that television has provided sufficient cause for the decline in scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and other measures of academic achievement or aptitude, although it may be one of several elements in a complex causal system. The major studies show that television viewing, after the early school years,…

This study was designed to examine the predictive significance of different types and degrees of precocity in preschool children and to assess the effects of participation in a model preschool-kindergarten program operated in conjunction with the study. Extraordinary precocity is defined for this study as performance at the norm for children twice…

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between reading achievement and a set of social and individual variables through the use of a critical path analysis. Data, taken from Cycle II of the National Health Examination Survey, included statistics on a national sample of 7,119 children, ages six through eleven years. Four…

A study investigated the effects of a teacher inservice program on teaching fourth grade students the functional relationship between questions and the response information to which they refer. Ten teachers and 180 of their students participated in the study. Three of the teachers participated in a traditional half-day teacher workshop on…