Toddlers 15 and 18 months of age were exposed to audiovisual recordings of two novel words paired with novel toys. The words were presented in familiar sentence frames or in isolation. Linguistic context had a greater effect on younger than on older infants. Specifically, 15-month-old boys exhibited successful learning only in the context of…

Researchers, educators, and parents have long believed that children learn cause and effect relationships through exploratory play. However, previous research suggests that children are poor at designing informative experiments; children fail to control relevant variables and tend to alter multiple variables simultaneously. Thus, little is…

In five experiments using rats, we investigated compound context-flavor conditioning. The subjects were allowed to spend time in the target context, where they had access to a flavored solution (either citric acid or saccharine) before receiving an injection of LiCl. Context aversion was then assessed by using a blocking procedure. When the flavor…

Predictive visual context facilitates visual search, a benefit termed contextual cuing (M. M. Chun & Y. Jiang, 1998). In the original task, search arrays were repeated across blocks such that the spatial configuration (context) of all of the distractors in a display predicted an embedded target location. The authors modeled existing results using…

In everyday life, people typically observe fragments of causal networks. From this knowledge, people infer how novel combinations of causes they may never have observed together might behave. I report on 4 experiments that address the question of how people intuitively integrate multiple causes to predict a continuously varying effect. Most…

Schools, and especially principals, are challenged constantly to improve learning outcomes for students. We advance five ideas that should help principals address these challenges: (a) student learning "plus," (b) school accomplishments, (c) organizational context and depth of repertoire, (d) social and political context, and (e)…

A study examines the role of contextual risk in psychopathology and prosocial behavior in adolescents. The results show that risk accumulation matters instead of specificity and that the number of adverse life events is nonmultiplicative with psychopathology.

The authors report on a series of 5 experiments in which 462 5- to 10-year-old children and 109 adults were required to copy geometric figures either with no constraints or following prior exposure to primes consisting of different parsings of the figures. The analysis focused on the graphic strategies adopted by the participants to copy the…

This hermeneutic phenomenological study describes the lived experiences of high-achieving, low-income undergraduates and their transition into a college environment historically reserved for wealthy students. The results of this study indicate that these students are flourishing in full need-based financial aid programs as a result of their own…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of principals whose schools were granted innovation status in accordance with the "Colorado Innovation Schools Act of 2008" (CISA). The CISA created a statewide system that allowed individual schools and entire districts to increase autonomy and…

American demographics are shifting, most notably among the student population (G. Orfield, 2009). The proportion of white student enrollment has steadily decreased since the 1960s, from approximately 80% of students to 56% today (G. Orfield, 2009). In the South and the West--two of the most populous regions in the country--schools report nonwhite…

This article tells the story and explores the significance of Notre Dame's efforts over the past 18 years to serve the pressing needs of underresourced elementary and secondary schools throughout the United States, with a special focus on the faith-based sector--and more particularly, Catholic schools. These schools are increasingly fragile but…

Forty years ago, 96 percent of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84 percent. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents this historical shift. We show…

This study examines the distribution, change, and impact of the Index of Teacher Academic Capital (ITAC) in all Illinois public schools from 2001 to 2006. The ITAC is a school-level composite of five measures: teacher ACT Composite and English scores, teacher Basic Skills Test results, teacher certification status, and teacher undergraduate…

This report presents guidelines for addressing the multiple comparisons problem in impact evaluations in the education area. The problem occurs due to the large number of hypothesis tests that are typically conducted across outcomes and subgroups in these studies, which can lead to spurious statistically significant impact findings. The…