Uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to reveal a detrimental contextual effect on 10th-grade mathematics and reading achievement associated with attending a school with a high concentration of children from single-parent homes. Maintains this effect is evident even when individual demographic characteristics and family…

Recounts insights gained from shadowing a student-teacher supervisor at Kenyatta University, Kenya, noting difficulties faced when coping with deficient facilities, insufficient funding and personnel, cultural opposition to education, and classroom management. Provides information on the Kenyan University System and teacher preparation, campus…

A study with 62 students compared the effectiveness of face-to-face and World Wide Web-based instruction in the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) segment of an undergraduate health-education course. Results suggest collaborative learning activities were more effective in the Web-based than in the class environment; students perceived the…

A longitudinal study of 1,285 high school graduates and dropouts with disabilities, special education teachers, and parents investigated the kinds of school services that are needed and actually received by students with disabilities and the quality of life for the students' last year in high school. Helpful supports are identified. (CR)

Maintains that many traditional economics classroom experiments unfairly label, deride, or denigrate altruistic behavior and moral motivation. Describes several in-class experiments, the prisoners' dilemma, dictator games, and double auction experiments and discusses their inherent bias against moral considerations. Examines the ethical problems…

Interviews with urban teachers examined factors they considered fundamental for successful teaching, comparing them with factors identified by student teachers and teacher educators. Experienced teachers indicated that contextual, personal, and pedagogical factors directly affected successful teaching. Across the groups, factors were ranked…

An educator and an architect discuss school design considerations that include developing a strong learning plan, a strong concept of community, and architecture that supports both. Involving the community and students in planning instills a sense of ownership and pride that is more conducive to learning and school safety than tough standards and…

Examines formal classroom encounters among Laotian refugee and at-risk American students and their teacher in a lower-track literature course and the influences of community context and school culture. Highlights linkages between student perceptions of self-competence and peer worth, the teacher's role in the social organization of work-related…

This paper discusses the overuse of medications to deal with attention deficit disorder (ADD) in the classroom, offering suggestions related to teaching strategies, classroom environment, school environment, and home environment to help keep students' attention without resorting to medication. A chart shows the difference between ADD and other…

Four key factors contributed to program success or failure of five context-specific, school-based teacher preparation programs in Arizona: university personnel, administrative support, flexibility and risk taking, and a focus on quality. Among individual program goals were preparation of special education teachers for elementary and rural Navajo…

Articulates the ideological and social relationships reinforced by the spatial design of urban children's schools in the early 19th century. Describes the purpose and function of the four types of schools: Sunday, monitorial, infant, and workhouse. Includes numerous illustrations from a variety of sources. (MJP)

Discusses the isolated and uncertain status of geography departments in most community colleges. Identifies the root of the problem as being a combination of community college growth and the shift from an academic to a remedial/vocational orientation. Finds this disturbing in light of community colleges' massive enrollment. (MJP)

A 1996 project examined transition from "special schools" to postsecondary education in the United Kingdom. Students were interviewed concerning their feelings about their change of circumstance and environment, and parents were surveyed about their optimal scenario for the change. A mentoring model to facilitate the transition and a…

A study examining school violence surveyed 819 students in grades 8, 10, and 11 in a rural secondary school in 1997 and 1999. Student feelings toward school safety were not significantly different in the 2 years. However, there was a significant decline in feeling safe at home, which may be a catalyst for future school problems. (Contains 24…

Describes the evolution of a university course from a face-to-face experience to a Web-based asynchronous learning environment. Topics include cognition and learning; distance learning and distributed learning; student learning communities and the traditional classroom; the future as it relates to education and technology; collaborative student…