The purpose of this report is to examine how well students in Massachusetts are meeting the Goals of Education, as measured by the Massachusetts Education Assessment Program (MEAP). The first section of this report defines various levels of proficiency and then compares different groups within the student population in terms of the percentages…

Older learners are often led into adult education by a quest for self-development and the wish to make meaning of the human experience. Adult educators should explore and appreciate the process of human development in the last stage. In old age there can be a merging of the knowledge of the body (life's stories) and of the spirit (developmental…

A symposium on year-round schooling was held to provide a framework to enable camp professionals and school personnel to better understand the dynamics of year-round education, year-round schools, camping, and the areas where they are (1) compatible or (2) mutually exclusive. The purposes of the symposium were: (1) to explore the developmental…

There has been a long-standing debate about the proper relationships between teacher preparation and liberal education. The current wave of concern about the quality of teacher preparation, combined with enrollment declines in colleges of education, has led to major reorganization in some institutions which have moved significant portions of the…

Presented and discussed is a model which can be used by educators who want to develop an interdisciplinary map skills program in geography and mathematics. The model assumes that most children in elementary schools perform cognitively at Piaget's concrete operational stage, that readiness for map skills can be assessed with Piagetian or…

The classroom environment elicits social comparison behavior in which a student uses peers' performance as a gauge for his own self-assessment. Social comparison as it relates to ability is a four phase sequential process. In phase one, stimulation of social comparison is elicited through developmentally-determined cognitive capacities and motives…

The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between self-disclosure and intimacy status. Sixty-four women and 32 men (mean age = 27.44) were asked to complete the Greene Self-Disclosure Sentence Blank in response to one of two conditions, each of which specified a hypothetical target person for the self-revealing communication: a…

Sections of this guide deal with an overview of the English language arts K-12 program, organizing for instruction, and evaluation. It is intended to be used as a resource for teachers. The overview section begins with a rationale, major emphases, general student language needs, K-12 learning goals, and changes in emphases that are necessary as…

Little research on the relationship between self knowledge and teacher effectiveness seems to exist. The Self Knowledge Project, a study of more than 1,000 people of various ages, identified 4 distinct stages of self knowledge development: (1) elemental; (2) situational; (3) pattern; and (4) process. The Self Knowledge Project created the…

Sex differences on Perry's stages of epistemological development were investigated in a study of 100 freshmen (50 men and 50 women) at a large midwestern university. A semi-structured interview probed six domains related to Perry's theory, including the role of the learner, instructor, and peers in the learning situation, the question of…

Veteran teachers are often discontent because of the repetitive nature of teaching. New experiences, not repetition, are necessary for growth. Previous theories of adult development include deterministic models (such as those of Freud, trait and factor psychology, and behaviorism) and the developmental theory, which reveals no evidence of adult…

The study identified elementary level non-academic employment competencies needed by students with visual impairments. The first phase of the study validated and prioritized 32 competencies needed for successful employment of adults with visual impairments. Competencies were rated by 141 professionals including coordinators of services for…

Based on weekly reports sent via electronic mail, correspondence between sites, and bi-monthly audiotapes from teachers, this qualitative study analyses data from 32 elementary and secondary Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) teachers in five schools concerning management changes that occurred in teaching and learning in the new computerized…

A study was conducted to determine if knowledge of the purposes of written language facilitated reading achievement in preschool children. The study also compared the performance of boys and girls to determine if boys' generally poorer reading abilities could be related to differences in print awareness. Scores from the comprehension subtest of…

A cognitive developmental theory of reading was proposed and tested in a longitudinal study that (1) compared the development of conceptual reasoning (Piaget's "operativity") and oral language (vocabulary and grammar closure) of 148 Australian children during the first 5 years of school and (2) traced the relationship of these variables to reading…