Analyzes environmental chemistry courses taught at Princeton University. Discusses the importance of contextual and narrative linkages in teaching environmental chemistry. (JRH)

Two studies involving 195 undergraduates investigated memory errors occurring when the context standard used in judging target behaviors differs from the category norm standard available when behaviors are recalled. Results support a "natural" tendency to use the current categorical meaning of a judgment to reconstruct the referent of…

Resolution of serious behavior problems requires individual functional assessment of the events that predict and maintain the challenging behavior and identification of contextual factors that are relevant to effective behavioral support. Functional assessment can involve review of school records, interviews, rating scales, direct observation, and…

A theory of self-determination is presented in which concepts of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are explicated and the innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are discussed. A review of laboratory and field studies indicates the importance of social contexts that facilitate satisfaction of these basic…

The industrial age, by mechanizing production and reorganizing the workplace into large factory units, destroyed a pattern of life that saw living, working, and learning as a single interconnected entity. Conventional schooling, stressing abstract knowledge, has separated learning from the community and world of work. The new, higher order…

Cohesion analysis has been used to investigate the language of schizophrenics and that associated with other psychiatric syndromes. Cohesion, one means of creating text, cannot account for all aspects of the pretheoretical notion of coherence. As a research tool, cohesion meets the dual criteria of an analysis of language in context and…

Describes a comprehensive model of communication that incorporates four sets of relationships within a two-dimensional matrix: systems perspective (input, integration, output, feedback); rhetoric (purpose and method in objective and subjective perspectives); transactional process (simultaneous and multiple interactions among elements); and…

Discusses the interaction between children's minds and the learning environment, offering a conceptual framework that aims at creating authentic contexts where the quality and variety of mediated learning experiences will enable children to build a deep understanding within the domain studied. (MDM)

Difficulties in defining and examining ethnicity as a variable in psychological research are explored, and it is asserted that many problems in assessment research arise from not making explicit the assumptions underlying the use of ethnicity as an exploratory variable and from inadequately describing cultural and contextual characteristics of…

Argues that information designers can obtain a better understanding of users by using the contextual inquiry methodology, which involves conducting open-ended conversations with users while they perform their work. Notes that information designers using contextual inquiry depend on context, partnership, and focus to make design decisions. Relates…

Embedded a context effect experiment in a structured telephone survey of renal transplant recipients. Results indicated that context effects interacted with the treatment adherence status of respondents such that noncompliant recipients were less susceptible to context manipulations. Respondents' characteristics as potential moderators of item…

Investigated children's classroom sociometry and size of their best-friend networks. For both classroom and playground settings, popular children had the most reciprocal best friends, while rejected children had the fewest, but had more on the playground than in the classroom. Results suggest that constraints and opportunities of different…

This study was conducted using observations in mathematics classes at two all-girls' schools. The class in the high socioeconomic school constructed content that was perceived as required for entry into higher education while the low socioeconomic school constructed mathematics needed for everyday-life transactions. (30 references) (Author/MKR)

Student understanding of 30 nontechnical words used in science was investigated. No significant differences were found between the understanding of nontechnical words in science or between the verbal reasoning ability of males (n=108) and females (n=89). Of the four different question formats, students had the most difficulty with the synonym…

Presents results of a German study distinguishing between effects of knowledge on writing and re-effects of writing on knowledge. Reports that knowledge primarily affects the content domain of text, especially topic relatedness and logical structure of text, but not the linguistic domain. Concludes that both oral and written verbalization enables…