Presents the work of Bronfenbrenner as providing a framework within which the subject matter of human development can be organized and applied. The relevance of Bronfenbrenner's ecological perspective, and implications of adoption of that perspective with reference to studies of families and learning environments, are discussed. (PCB)

Explores the question raised by the following article: What are the consequences, both cognitive and social, of engaging in a particular cultural practice?. States one consequence that has gained prominence: "intra-individual variability," the extent to which what is learned remains linked to the situation in which it is learned or come…

A fuzzy set model is offered for interpreting vague frequency expressions, such as "rarely" and "sometimes." Results with 152 undergraduates reporting marijuana use reflect different frequency expressions for the same level of use and suggest that self-report validity may be enhanced by analyzing frequency expressions as fuzzy…

The praxis model for adult education places lifelong learning and the adult learner in a societal context and recognizes that learners and knowledge are embedded in context. Praxis places attention on three essential tasks of the learner: consciousness, practice, and reflection on practice. (JOW)

Situated cognition, the concept that learning is integrally situated in everyday activity, enables more accurate understanding of adult learning. Authentic activity, involving situations requiring actual rather than simulated cognitive processes, may be a better basis for adult education. (SK)

A complete theory of adult learning must take into consideration the learner, learning process, and context. Andragogy, self-directed learning, consciousness, critical theory, feminism, transformational learning, and situated cognition contribute to understanding of this complex phenomenon. (SK)

Examined the contribution of specific contextual attributes to six-month-old infants' recognition of a well-learned cue. Infants did not encode contextual information in a holistic manner. The perceptual identification of contextual cues that were represented in the memory of an event was requisite for the retrieval of the memory. (GLR)

Examined children's comprehension and production of idioms through the roles of familiarity and of different kinds of contextual information on comprehension. A sample of 264 children showed that familiarity (i.e., frequency of exposure) plays a minor role and only for children who are not yet able to use contextual information. (18 references)…

The ability of six-month-old infants to remember a functional category acquired in a specific context was assessed in three experiments. Findings revealed that at six months, information about the place where categories are constructed is prerequisite for retrieval of a category concept from long-term memory. (GLR)

Argues that technical writers must construct proper contexts for readers' understanding. Discusses reader-oriented syntax, rhetorical confidence, and three kinds of context qualifiers. Offers various examples. (SR)

Responses of 75 expert outdoor leaders from Canada and the United States concerning leadership in 12 hypothetical backpacking scenarios provided partial support for a theory that predicted probability of leadership style (democratic, autocratic, or abdicratic) based on favorability of conditions, task orientation, and relationship orientation.…

Focuses on the utility of ideology in understanding educational practice. Comprehending the relationship between appearances and reality is facilitated by semiotics--the study of symbols and signs. Using field study data from three schools, ideology is described as socially constructed and based partially on policymakers' connections to a larger…

Discussion of context focuses on the various contexts surrounding the design and use of intelligent tutoring systems and proposes an initial framework of contexts by classifying them into three major groupings: interactional; environmental, including classifications of knowledge and social environment; and objectival contexts. (Author/LRW)

The eight articles of this special issue focus on the cultural and personal elements of a mathematics learning situation that may be described as the context. The articles share an approach to context that views activity and meaning making as important determinants of human behavior. Each article contains references. (SLD)

Confirmatory factor analysis of data from 1,346 respondents to the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) (C. Peterson and others, 1982) reveals that adequate fit is provided by a three-factor attributional style model that includes context-dependent item sets. Results suggest that there is no such thing as a nonsituational attributional style.…