A study of 58 doctoral students in four departments notes four general tasks of transition and initial socialization into graduate student life and future career: intellectual mastery; learning realities of graduate student life; learning about the profession; and integrating into the department. Some reasons for leaving a doctoral program are…

The pervasiveness of information technology in higher education requires rethinking notions of student, course, curriculum, and other traditional concepts and processes of instruction. This article discusses Internet issues (access, portability, reliability, reboot priorities and back-up communications, student preparedness) and describes new…

Criticizes the emphasis on job and skill training that has gained recent support in the United Kingdom. Discusses the Dearing Report of 1997, a government review of the purpose and practice of higher education. Maintains that education should enhance students' critical-thinking skills. (MJP)

Describes ongoing case studies of U.S. teacher-education institutions that are reforming subject-matter preparation for prospective teachers. Discusses research goals, theoretical framework concerning levels of disciplinary understanding and the nature of knowledge and skills across university disciplines, and problems with the administrative…

Lists resources available from ERIC that address the nature, content, purpose, and appropriate pedagogy for social studies and citizenship education. Briefly summarizes the main argument of each resource. Includes information on availability and ordering of documents. (MJP)

Examines the decentralized and discipline-specific nature of graduate education and how it creates a unique and diverse climate for graduate students. The current population of graduate students is described, research on graduate students is described, focusing on four factors that influence the student environment and five types of student.…

This subject guide includes Web sites and other resources on ancient civilizations with age levels and appropriate subject disciplines specified. Also includes CD-ROMs and software, videos, books, audios, magazines, professional resources, and a sample student assignment. (LRW)

Discusses the cost of access to research information and suggests that lower staff costs in a digital library setting are a key to providing more affordable access. Topics include equivalent library services; quality of service; differences between disciplines; archiving and preservation; citations, hyperlinks, and reference linking; metadata;…

Demonstrates the dangers of an Americanized world expanding through the importation of American English. Suggests that linguistic sameness creates a loss of identity and deprives people of specific cultures and languages to call their own. (Author/VWL)

Argues that children need to learn about civic issues in their education because certain virtues are required for a decently organized society. Also contends that the school has obligations to educate the young in civics and impart knowledge because it is in the students' best interests; this is not an encroachment on the privacy of the…

In this chapter, the authors aim to review recent, sociocultural studies of classroom-based research in science education in light of a sample of practice-based research within the field of science studies. They provide a framework for examining the discipline of science that can also be useful for assessing its impact on students. The framework…

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to estimate the contribution of discipline-related knowledge and English-language proficiency to reading comprehension in English for academic purposes (EAP) and, second, to specify the levels at which the compensatory effect between the two variables takes place for successful EAP reading. The…

Although the term academic literacies was originally developed with regard to the study of literacies in higher education and the university, the concept also applies to K-12 education. An academic literacies perspective treats reading and writing as social practices that vary with context, culture, and genre (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street,…

This article presents the author's comments on the article by Keith and Ender on sociology's disciplinary core being reflected in introductory sociology textbooks. The author mentions that Keith and Ender claim that if sociology has a disciplinary core, it "would logically be located in the introductory textbook." Furthermore, since a science is…

The linguistic resources used by academic writers to adopt a position and engage with readers, variously described as "evaluation," "stance" and "metadiscourse," have attracted increasing attention in the literature over the last 10 years and now form an important element of many ESP courses. A relatively overlooked interpersonal feature, however,…