A detailed analysis was conducted of the difficulty over time of the essay prompts for the English Composition Achievement Test (ECT) with Essay of the College Board. Differential difficulty was explored by considering whether the relationship between the reference groups of male and white students and the focal groups (female, American Indian,…

Maternal prenatal smoking, birth weight and sociodemographic factors were investigated in relation to cognitive abilities of 1544 children (aged 3.5 years) participating in the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Children's Development. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was used to assess verbal ability, the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale…

This guide is designed for those teaching return-to-study courses for adults. It is divided into two parts. A course guide begins by explaining why past approaches for equipping students for academic success are unhelpful. The approach used in this guide is described by drawing on cognitive psychology, especially about short- and long-term memory,…

Reports research examining the effects of writing activities on mathematics achievement. Results indicate that prewriting activities, such as modeling or prompts, are essential and that regular, systematic writing over an extended period can improve students' performance in, and attitude toward, mathematics. (15 references) (MDH)

This U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) quarterly issue contains six papers describing development of services for minority individuals with disabilities. "Goals for Improving Services to Minority Individuals with Disabilities" (Robert R. Davila) discusses the need to increase high-school graduation…

This paper describes the development and use of language training procedures, referred to as cues-pause-point procedures, that rely on behavioral principles and simple and natural teaching procedures and that are exhibited in many normal parent-child or teacher-student verbal interactions. The procedures have been effective in teaching severely…

This study proposes a model of associations between young children's social cognition and their social behavior with peers. In this model, two latent structures -children's representations of peer relationships and emotion regulation -- predict children's competent, prosocial, withdrawn, and aggressive behavior. Moreover, the model proposes that…

Previous research has shown that both vocal and visual cues are utilized in stereotyping and that teachers' stereotypes of students' ethnic and social class backgrounds affect both their expectations and evaluations of them. This study offers evidence toward the following questions: (1) do teachers evaluate students differently according to mode…

Examined in three studies EuroCanadian and Native Canadian children's memory for stereotypic behaviors attributed to ingroup and outgroup members. Found that outgroup favoritism, typically found among low-status group members, was reversed among Native Canadian children attending a heritage school. Age and cognitive development level predicted…

The New Mexico Portfolio Writing Assessment for grades 4 and 6 (optional for grade 8) is conducted each school year with a call for each student's best piece in March. All students in grades 4 and 6 participate, unless assessed as Limited English Proficient. This Teacher's Guide provides instructions for procedures to be followed throughout the…

The New Mexico Portfolio Writing Assessment for grades 4 and 6 (optional for grade 8) is conducted each school year, with a call for each student's best piece in March. This Teacher's Guide provides instructions for implementing the portfolio program throughout the year, in order to ensure standardized application of the process. The portfolio…

A study compared the approaches of self-paced and conventional instruction in Navy training. Using a sample of 37 Navy and Marine Corps courses, researchers contrasted the conventional, mixed, computer-managed, and self-paced instructional approaches according to the following six measures of instructional quality: prerequisites, cues,…

Three polytomous DIF detection techniques--the Mantel test, logistic regression, and polySTAND--were used to identify GRE® Analytical Writing prompts ("Issue" and "Argument") that are differentially difficult for (a) female test takers; (b) African American, Asian, and Hispanic test takers; and (c) test takers whose strongest…

Testwise responses of grade-school students to multiple-choice science items and the intercorrelations between different testwiseness skills were examined in this document. A total of 134 third-grade, 133 fifth-grade, and 143 sixth-grade students from two elementary schools in a large suburban school district in Utah responded to 60 science items…

The use of a generative and evaluative computerized prompting framework to improve the teaching of writing skills was studied with 164 children in grades 6, 7, and 8 with high or low writing skills, who were randomly assigned to control or treatment groups. The treatment group received computer prompts, think sheet scaffolds, and expert modeling…