This study investigated the types of informal learning activities that adults with low literacy skills engage in outside of formal literacy programs and how these activities relate to their literacy practices. Key informants for the study included 10 adults identified at International Adult Literacy Survey levels 1 and 2. Using ethnographic…

This article reports and discusses the findings of an initial inquiry into secondary school students' comprehension strategy use during small-group, peer-led discussions of literary text. One classroom of ninth-grade English students in the midwestern United States participated in the inquiry. Data consisted of the verbatim transcripts of four…

In this response, Brown finds solid points of agreement with Eva Alerby and Cecilia Perm, starting with their premise that music learning is most effective when taught within a context. While some students prefer learning in a linear, rule-oriented setting, more often than not a musical concept will be comprehended best if it is first experienced…

Situated thought and action are facilitated according to specific children, negotiated among classroom community members, and placed in a specific place and time. Through action research, the author worked for about a year with a group of 15 elementary school children between the ages of 7 and 10, during a Cub Scout program in Lefkosia, Cyprus.…

The authors analyzed mathematics achievement data from a longitudinally matched student cohort from a large southwestern U.S. school district to investigate school context and practice effects on the academic performance and growth of middle school students. Investigation of the degree to which aspects of the school environment related to…

Festival performance is no trivial endeavor. At one midwestern state festival alone, 10,938 events received a rating over a 3-year period (2001-2003). Such an extensive level of participation justifies sustained study. To learn more about variables that may underlie success at solo and small ensemble evaluative festivals, Bergee and Platt (2003)…

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis…

This paper examines the relationship between orthographic depth and reliance upon context for oral reading in English and Hebrew. Research on context effects in English has indicated that the decoding ability of adequate readers is only minimally affected by context. The effect of context may be greater in Hebrew because of its deeper orthography…

Situational analysis is a framework for professional practice and research in educational psychology. The process is guided by a set of practice principles requiring that psychologists' work is evidence-based, ecological, collaborative and constructive. The framework is designed to provide direction for psychologists who wish to tailor their…

In recent years, career development and career counseling have increasingly been informed by concepts emanating from the constructivist worldview. For example, the Systems Theory Framework (STF; M. McMahon, 2002; M. McMahon & W. Patton, 1995; W. Patton & M. McMahon, 1997, 1999) of career development has been proposed as a metatheoretical account…

This article critically surveys scholarly themes relating to the study of values in educational administration and their implications for administrative practice. It is suggested that values perspectives for school leaders emerged largely in response to the determinism of the Theory Movement, particularly the emphases on individuals as the primary…

This study investigated the possibility that the amount of content children include in their stories is affected by how stories are presented. Simple stories were presented to kindergarten and Grade 2 children in 3 conditions: orally (oral only), pictorially (pictures only), and combined oral and pictures. The kindergarteners recalled more content…

Episodic memory (EM) deficits are the hall-mark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Story-retelling tasks are particularly sensitive to EM impairments and require participants to recall a short story immediately and after a delay. The purpose of this study was to determine whether presentation modality influences story recall in AD participants. Thirty…

Drawing upon self-categorization theory, we predicted that the content of children's stereotypes concerning the gender in-group would be contextually variable. Two studies are reported, each looking at five-, seven-, and 10-year-old children's stereotypes of the gender in-group in two different contexts. Study 1 examined judgements of the…

To explain how interpersonal behavior in relational contexts usually reproduces but sometimes modifies macro structural patterns, I outline a conceptual framework within which to understand existing theories and evidence and to develop new ones. Actors create and enact structure by means of several types of shared cultural schemas ("ordering…