This paper focuses on the experiences of British parents who have children identified with "special education needs" within mainstream education. Expectations of mainstream education can have a negative affect on parents when a child is unable to maintain his or her education within a mainstream school. In England and Wales,…

In an instructional message the contextual dominance is most often conveyed in the form of printed or spoken sentences. Within any sentence used in conjunction with a picture are nouns or phrases that directly relate to contextual elements within the picture. These are called referents since they refer to objects perceptible in the picture. This…

Stereotypically, anger is associated more with males than females, yet self-report and observational measures have not unequivocally revealed gender-related differences in anger expression. To explore this contradiction, male (n=21)and female (n=23) college students were asked to describe anger incidents they had witnessed that involved either a…

This study investigated whether language context affects language choice in a Spanish-English bilingual infant from age 1;3 to 1;10. Most studies of child bilingualism assume that communicative competence occurs at a stage in language development after the onset of syntactic constructions, but this paper hypothesizes that once the child begins to…

This paper summarizes an investigation of the format used for equating the 1993 Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) sixth grade reading test. In 1992, each student took only one test, either a narrative test or an expository test. In 1993, there was only one test, which included both formats. Several possible approaches for linking the 1993…

This paper presents a critical analysis of the forms of constructivism that owe their origin either directly or indirectly to Piaget's theory. The paper is organized into three sections. The first provides a brief synopsis of the structuralist assumptions underlying Piagetian theory and then demonstrates the ways in which these assumptions…

Two kinds of perspectives governing the provision and preservation of knowledge, a universal and an ecological perspective, are discussed in this paper. In the first case, scientific observations are represented through a semantic interpretation of facts. This is illustrated with a series of experiments on semantic feature perception in the recall…

Item parameter estimates vary for a variety of reasons, including estimation error, characteristics of the examinee samples, and context effects (e.g., item location effects, section location effects, etc.). Although we expect variation based on theory, there is reason to believe that observed variation in item parameter estimates exceeds what…

Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This is not to deny, however, that the criticisms levelled at empathy-type tasks…

Suggests that teachers should foster situations where text, readers, and teacher can meet in collaborative ways. Identifies four reading research categories focusing on different contexts that surround the reading act. (MM)

Compares the behavior of mothers to their own infants at three- to four- and nine- to 10-months of age in five of the societies described in previous chapters: Gusii of Kenya, Yucatec Mayan of Mexico, Italian, Swedish, and suburban Bostonian. Reveals differences between agrarian and urban-industrial societies, as well as culture-specific patterns…

A number of studies have found that essays are scored higher when preceded by poor quality scripts than when preceded by good quality scripts. This study investigated the effects of scoring procedures designed to reduce the influence of context. Context effects were found irrespective of the scoring procedure used. (Author/PN)

The presently viewed role and utility of measures of instructional sensitivity are summarized. A case is made that the rationale for the assessment of instructional sensitivity can be applied to all achievement tests and should not be restricted to criterion-referenced mastery tests. (Author/BW)

America's public schools are making harmful, irreversible decisions based on test results that--in an increasing number of cases--can't be trusted, Arizona State University's Education Policy Research Laboratory has found. The pressure of high-stakes tests is forcing school districts and state Departments of Education to take inappropriate and at…

The purpose of this report is to address and review school violence and the implications it has on educators and school systems in today's society. It will lead a discussion on the current state faced by North American educators and school systems and the possible solutions that could be implemented to reduce school violence. This report is…