A study compared motivational determinants of 22 students at-risk for language difficulties (in reading and spelling) and students with high language skills. The at-risk students exhibited significantly lower perceptions of goal importance, intention to achieve, belief strength, outcome evaluation, and normative beliefs, and eventually scored…

A study examined different types of and amount of vocational programming received by 398 secondary students with emotional or behavioral disorders and post-school outcomes. Generic vocational education and on-the-job- training had significant positive relationships with total earnings. All types of vocational education had inverse significant…

Discussion of portfolios as authentic assessment measures focuses on a review of schools requiring portfolios for Master of Library Science programs that identified commonalities among programs. Analyzed documents at Web sites to determine that at least 14 ALA-accredited programs use portfolio assessment for evaluation of student performance,…

Examines whether observers' perceptions of private lessons are affected by the type of teacher verbalizations used to make student performance corrections. Asks preservice music education teachers (n=50) to respond to a 10 statement questionnaire after viewing two videotaped private lessons. Finds no meaningful difference in subject responses…

Reports on interviews with six headteachers of Roman Catholic primary schools on the composition and responsibilities of their senior management teams. Findings explore the reasons for the schools' success and, in particular, the centrality of the Catholic faith and the practice of the senior management teams. (Contains 23 references.) (MLF)

Two experiments tested claim that transparency of Korean fraction names promotes fraction concepts. Findings indicated that U.S. and Korean first- and second-graders erred similarly on a fraction-identification task, by treating fractions as whole numbers. Korean children performed at chance when whole-number representation was included but…

Drawing on theories of educational motivation, this study investigated how perceptions of the school psychological environment predict change over time in educational expectations among low-income adolescent mothers. Findings indicated that teenage mothers' perceptions that teachers devalued them intellectually by underestimating their abilities…

Three experiments explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people were made by children and adults. Results indicated that children often predicted that people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological events. Older children…

Results of descriptive analyses of 41 children (ages 7-12) from two residential treatment centers painted a picture of chaotic childhoods marked by significant stress and trauma. Gender, child's satisfaction with current discharge plan, and multiple traumatic experiences were found to be associated with variations in symptomatology. (Contains…

This article discusses the influence of educators on the development of gifted students and describes the efforts of the English College in Prague to put skilled teachers and gifted students together. It stresses the need for effective and focused teaching and outlines characteristics of a learning environment. (CR)

Describes a study that examined the effects of goal setting on undergraduate students competing in a computerized business simulation. Group cohesiveness is discussed, treatments for the experimental and control groups are described, perceived team success is measured, and team simulation performance is evaluated. (30 references) (LRW)

Uses measures drawn from the "Information Power" guidelines for school library media programs and data from a national survey to compare the performance of the states in providing library collections and services in public schools. Tables present data on sample size, collection effort scores, and service scale scores. Raw data on collections and…

The study of 35 posttreatment stutterers found that magnitude estimation and interval scaling were both valid procedures for measuring speech naturalness. Speech of nonstutterers was judged more natural than speech of treated stutterers. The acoustic parameters most highly correlated with speech naturalness were voice onset time measure and…

The conversations of 12 preschool stutterers with their mother, father, and a familiar peer were analyzed. Subjects' verbal interactive patterns did not really differ with various partners. Although some children were variable in fluency failures with different partners, the partner's verbal contribution was not associated with predictable changes…

Children with mental retardation are particularly prone to failure on relational tasks such as oddity and match-to-sample, suggesting a differential sensitivity to relational information. This paper reports on several studies in which characteristics of stimulus arrays were enhanced. Results demonstrated the theoretical and practical significance…