In the scientific literature, the debate around the school and class effect is polarized, because the variance between schools and classes is explained either by school and class process or by group composition. The first aim of this article is to shed light on this debate and move beyond it by reviewing qualitative and quantitative studies…

The Talkback Project used blog software to involve eighth-grade language arts students, preservice teachers, and parents in online discussion of young adult novels and their personal connections with them. The author shares the challenges associated with the project--including the implications of Internet safety and legal concerns associated with…

This study looks at preservice teachers' attitudes toward children and teaching in an urban high-poverty community in relation to their involvement in two different literacy education experiences: one literacy course sequence addressed issues of cultural diversity with respect to this community, and the other did not explicitly address these…

This study examined whether scripts provide a basis for the categories preschool children use to structure their semantic memories and whether the use of taxonomies to structure memory becomes more common only after children enter elementary school. Subjects were 108 children in three equal groups of 18 boys and 18 girls children each of 4-, 5-,…

A one-year qualitative study examined the ways in which two at-risk beginning readers and writers developed in a classroom where teaching strategies most commonly identified with whole language were used. The students, 6-year-old "Josh" and 7-year-old "Jenny," were enrolled in a transitional class composed of students who had…

This workbook is designed to present the process of developing instructional materials to persons who want to write teaching material for a specific and defined readership group. Developed by many people in various educational organizations who have writing and editing experience, it is especially relevant for writing teaching materials for adult…

In 1992, the Guam System of Performance Measures and Standards for vocational education was adopted. In 1993-94, results of the performance measures and standards indicated the following: 68 percent of secondary students achieved the 0.5 grade growth in reading; about 90 percent of postsecondary students scored a mean gain of 1.2, well over the…

The history and current use of the label "Hispanic" are discussed in this exploration of the myth of cultural and national homogeneity among people of Latin American descent in the United States. The historical process of labeling groups of individuals is discussed, and how ethnic labels affect the meaning of citizenship and the struggle…

The psychological report is a particular genre of writing, incorporating elements of content and style shared by other literary genres, and appearing in many different forms. These forms range from terse, profile driven description of strengths and weaknesses, characteristic of computer generated psychological reports, to more descriptive,…

From 1980 to 1990, the number of native Spanish speakers in the service region of Virginia's Germanna Community College (GCC) increased significantly. In response, GCC implemented a Spanish language occupational/technical curricula for law enforcement personnel and health professionals. Classes focused on the development of highly effective…

While Europe is experiencing new transnationalism based on technical economic links, European preschool education is not as accommodating to multicultural growth as economic growth has been. In many schools, children are forced to learn and interact in a language foreign to them. This break with their mother tongue is also a break with maternal…

This paper explores Luce Irigaray's analysis of gesture in the "praticable" and considers resonances and dissonances between the analytical/conference scene and the pedagogical exchange. Irigaray is a French language philosopher, linguist, and psychoanalyst who uses the French term "praticable" of psychoanalytic practice to…

By describing what has been learned in disseminating Success for All, a reform program for high-poverty elementary schools, this paper explores how a national approach to professional development might enable professional development networks to implement proven school change models. Success for All restructures the elementary school by…

This paper describes an agenda for expanding interest and motivation among sixth-grade foreign language students in a middle-class suburban community located in northeastern Illinois. The problem was originally noted by the teaching staff/researchers who found students unable to focus and maintain attention during class. Administration of surveys…

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics' 1993-94 annual Schools and Staffing Survey concerning the training of teachers of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students are summarized. LEP training was defined to include both pre-service and in-service training. In 1993-94, United States public schools enrolled over 2.1 million LEP…