When children start school it is not just a transition to a new physical context, but also an entry point to a new "culture" where aspects of teaching, learning and assessment are different, and hence what it means to be a learner is constructed differently. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in making links between…

As schools acquire and use computers for educational purposes, two major questions arise: (1) whether students from different strata of society will obtain equal access to computers, and (2) whether students from different strata of society will be taught similar or different uses of the computer. To explore the relationship between the…

In 1989, a survey was conducted to assess the status of computer use and education in two-year colleges in Alabama. Three copies of the survey instrument were sent to the academic deans of all 41 institutions in the state's two-year college system. The deans were asked to complete one questionnaire and ask two randomly selected teachers to…

Science faculty at small community colleges often face the problem of teaching courses at off-campus locations without laboratory facilities or equipment. An introductory physical science course offered at Southampton Correctional Center in Capron, Virginia, illustrates one approach to this problem. First, the instructor met with students prior to…

Vocational English Second Language (VESL) programs have traditionally given immigrant, migrant, and refugee language learners access to employment. VESL programs provide not only the language input needed for learning specific job tasks but also address the sociocultural skills of language needed to negotiate in today's workplace. The demand for…

Lifewriting is a form of autobiographical composition in which the non-expert, or even the beginning writer, tries to capture on paper the raw experiences of a lifetime. The intersections between family history and social or political events provide one set of starting points for the lifewriter who sets out on the neverending journey to capture a…

This paper outlines seven challenges facing the United States in the preparation of a competent workforce for the year 2000. The first challenge will be to predict what specific workers will need to know in the year 2000, and to make this prediction 4 to 6 years prior to students' completion of the training process. The second challenge is to…

The training of computer users is becoming increasingly important to all industrialized nations. This study examined how individual differences (e.g. ability and gender) may affect learning outcomes when acquiring computer skills. Subjects (N=347) were college students who took a computer literacy course from a college of business administration…

A study of Hmong refugees settling in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) focused on the social resources (e.g., kinship, literacy) available for adapting to life in the United States and the refugees' use of those resources. The study also resulted in profiles of several Hmong adults, documenting language and literacy use in daily life and patterns of…

This report summarizes the proceedings of a 1-day conference on employment and training needs of the 1990s. Information summarized includes background and purpose, design and methodology, keynote speaker and presentation, synthesis of small group work, and implications and future community actions. The keynote speaker, Anthony Carnevale noted that…

This guide is designed to provide secondary teachers and administrators with the information necessary to adapt or develop a functional curriculum for children and youth who display academic difficulties. (A functional curriculum teaches functional skills in the most appropriate setting for specific skill acquisition.) It provides suggestions of…

A study examined two 1989 basal reading series' (published by McGraw Hill and Holt) readiness/priming sequences in order to ascertain the theoretical bases of each and then compared the findings with those of an earlier study. All pages of the readiness/priming sequence student texts and workbooks of both basal reading series were analyzed using…

The basic assumption of this book is that reading and writing in school should be natural and enjoyable for children, and its ideas are based on the Piagetian theory that knowledge is constructed by each individual and the psycholinguistic view that learning takes place best when viewed as holistic and when instructional materials for children are…

Along with its companion teacher's guide, this student study text teaches writing skills needed to pass the New York Regents Competency Test (RCT) in Writing, using the computer as an instrument of instruction. The guide is arranged in three sections that match the tasks required on the RCT Writing Test: (1) The Business Letter; (2) The Report;…

This guide offers specific instructions and classroom materials for conducting workshops to train volunteer tutors of English as a Second Language (ESL). The guide contains five modules addressing different aspects and techniques of ESL instruction. Each module contains a preparation checklist for the trainer, objectives and precise procedures for…