This article reports on a case study conducted in 2006-2007 which explores boys' motivation for choosing Chinese Second Language (CSL) as an elective in secondary school. The purpose of the study was to find out what factors encouraged or discouraged junior secondary school boys in their choice to continue CSL. 133 boys aged thirteen-fourteen…

This article draws upon the author's experiences with designing and teaching a lower-level undergraduate course, Geography and Gender. It is proposed that there is a relative lack of resources available for conducting geography courses on gender, feminism, and/or sexuality and as such, this article addresses issues of text selection, course…

Background/Context: There has been little research on the relationship between mathematics and science coursework in secondary school. Purpose of Study: The present analysis explored the patterns of science course-taking in relation to the patterns of mathematics course-taking among high school graduates. Research Design: Using data from the 2000…

The first of two articles looks at reasons for library automation vendor failure and techniques that libraries can use to assess and reduce their risk in vendor selection. In the second article, representatives of eight prominent automation firms discuss industry problems. Three references are listed. (MES)

Factors to consider in choosing media: instructional design, logistics, equipment, material, and teacher preferences. (BD)

Decries lack of consistency of diacritical markings across different dictionaries, textbooks, etc; urges textbook committees to keep this factor in mind. (MH)

The author offers a generalized approach to the selection of a medium of instruction which lists the steps involved in media selection with a breakdown of the preliminary information required, the task, and the output of each step." (Author/AK)

The use of these three model selection information criteria for latent class models was studied for nonnested models: (1) Akaike's information criterion (H. Akaike, 1973) (AIC); (2) the Schwarz information (G. Schwarz, 1978) (SIC) criterion; and (3) the Bozdogan version of the AIC (CAIC) (H. Bozdogan, 1987). Situations in which each is preferable…

Presents a generalization and improvement for the definition proposed by E. Dzhafarov (2001) for selectiveness in the dependence of several random variables on several (sets of) external factors. This generalization links the notion of selective influence with that of conditional independence. (SLD)

Discusses issues in structural-equation-model selection that pertain to the general utility of the principle of parsimony. Provides an example using data generated by the relatively nonparsimonious simplex model and fitted rather well by a parsimonious growth-curve model belonging to a different class of models. (Author/SLD)

School districts currently spend $2.6 billion annually on maintaining a system of recruiting and hiring teachers who quit or fail. The 120 major urban districts are the primary locus of this teacher churn. The causes include the negative conditions of work in these districts, the impersonal hiring procedures which recruit and hire the wrong people…