The power of culture to shape gender identities becomes particularly crucial for adolescents as they make the transition from child to adult. Yet as adults we offer little coherent, direct instruction in such matters. The author advocates supporting girls as they explore complex and empowering literacy practices, particularly online.

This book presents eight essays by Vine Deloria, Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux and professor of political science at the University of Colorado. Essays examine issues facing Native American students as they progress through the educational system, and aim to help Indian students place Western knowledge into the context of tribal and community…

An ethnographic study examined school-community relationship and its effect on program implementation in six rural South Dakota towns serving as sites for the South Dakota Head Start/Public School Transition Demonstration Project (SDTP). SDTP is part of a national project to test whether providing continuous comprehensive services to Head Start…

This paper reports on the dilution effect of the ozone layer which jeopardizes a section of land in Chile from 53 degrees South latitude to 33 degrees South and the necessity of preparing the population for the possible ecological consequences of an increase in ultraviolet radiation. Scientists in Chile assume part of this task by studying the…

Kidcope, a check list developed to assess the prevalence of coping strategies among children and adolescents, was used to assess the prevalence of 10 coping strategies and their relative efficacy in a sample of 77 inner-city African American eighth graders (54% female). Compared to the white adolescents who comprised the original Kidcope sample of…

The narrative structure of a classroom event describes the order in which the story of the event unfolds. This paper compares the narrative structure of a traditional classroom to that of a communicative classroom. The comparison is made in the form of a drama in which a communicative mathematics spokesperson relates the comparative mathematics…

The term "contextual learning" refers to the type of learning that has also been called experiential learning, real-world education, active learning, and learner-centered instruction. Unlike traditional school learning, which is based on the principles of individual learning in a manner that is independent of tools and dependent on…

This book clarifies current efforts to reform teaching by providing a conceptual analysis of what a professional and a bureaucratic view of teaching entail. Case studies are presented illustrating what happens when differing approaches to teachers' work are tried in three school districts. The first chapter describes the two approaches to reform…

A literature review examines research and reports on school and school district size as they relate to educational quality and finance. Sections cover: (1) research on the relationships of size to course offerings, teacher qualifications, student achievement, student behavior, student participation, and school climate; (2) state level reports…

The "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989)" calls for the revision of existing secondary mathematics curricula which include an emphasis on contextual problems, multiple representations, and the use of computers. The focus of this revision significantly involves the acknowledgment of the key role of the…

The essential theories underlying the whole language approach require individual teachers to examine their assumptions about teaching and learning and to undergo a major paradigmatic shift that requires a new set of assumptions. One of the principal tenets of whole language is that the classroom teacher becomes an autonomous professional. This…

The Mathematics Education Research Group of Australia (MERGA) was officially constituted in 1980. In 1984, MERGA produced the first review of the mathematics education research carried out in that region. This book is the third in that series of research reviews. An overview provides the context in which the Australian research was conducted and…

This study examined the relationship of teacher decisional participation and school climate to teachers' sense of efficacy and their job satisfaction. Data came from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS-88) project, involving 1,035 schools with eighth grade students, and from the 1990 follow up of 1,296 schools. The final data…

Reflecting the current state of theory and practice in child welfare in Canada, these eight papers suggest a contemporary view of Canadian children and the contexts in which they develop as defined by legal rights and society. First, Henry S. Maas argues that attention to normal social development and its contexts, and to related ongoing theory…

The context of learning with computers is different from that of more traditional educational media because the computer is a new medium whose interactivity supports dynamic, evident, and malleable representations of abstract ideas. The model proposed addresses some mediating factors of the environment in which computers are used that affect…