Uses alienation as the conceptual framework for analyzing dynamics of preschool children's failed play interactions. Maintains that this perspective centralizes the sociocultural context out of which failed play interactions arise rather than identifying alienation as a problematic behavior. Discusses play episodes in a nursery school setting to…

Examines the role of context effects in the processing of homophones in Chinese and Chinese-English bilingual speech. Finds that prior sentence context has an early effect on the disambiguation of various homophone meanings in both monolingual and bilingual situations. Accounts for results by interactive activation models of lexical processing.…

Current uses of Socratic teaching, including those of V. G. Paley, are analyzed, and inconsistencies among them are identified. The misuse or abuse of the Socratic legacy occurs chiefly when his teaching is interpreted narrowly as a pedagogical technique devoid of context and irony. (Author/SLD)

Examines aspects of informal learning: (1) credit toward formal qualifications; (2) the value of nontraditional knowledge; (3) learners' awareness of their own learning; and (4) sensitivity of informal learning to context. Concludes that informal learning does not fit with the narrow view of knowledge in formal education and learners are often…

Challenges the use of authentic language in the classroom, arguing that it is largely impossible to use authentic language in the classroom because the classroom itself cannot provide the contextual conditions necessary for the text to be authenticated by the learners. (Author/VWL)

Explains how and why the economics concept "value added" came to be used in an educational context, focusing on early usage in the United Kingdom. The term has been developed, used, and defined in various, conflicting ways. Some ambiguities cannot be eliminated. Value-added effectiveness measures involve value judgments. (44 references)…

Two studies examined efficacy of context reinstatement in enhancing 5- to 7-year olds' recall. Results showed that children exposed to a context reminder 24 hours before the six-month interview and children interviewed in the event context did not differ but reported significantly more information than children in standard interview. (Author/KB)

Examines the uses of observations generated during testing through (a) qualitative synthesis of available research literature, (b) a study of a national sample of children, and (c) a study of children referred for psychoeducational evaluations. Results demonstrate that behavioral and temperament qualities evaluated by test observations are related…

Reanalyzed data from Goodman's 1965 study of whether increased reading fluency related to increased dependence on context in the process of word recognition and repeated Goodman's procedure with first-third graders. Results found that reading fluency was not significantly associated with context use, though third graders improved significantly…

Describes contextual factors that exert influence on whether, when, and how people retire. Interview data helped identify important contextual factors, including organizational membership, occupational membership, work peers, and the history of opportunities. Depending on the circumstances, these factors can enhance or limit the range of…

Discusses the new quality movement in East European higher education following the political changes of the last decade. Explores the importance of context in definitions of quality and its absence in the region's discourse on meeting international quality standards. (EV)

Suggests that cognitivism does not imply outright rejection of decomposition and decontextualization in education, critically analyzing two movements based in part on this rejection (situated learning and constructivism). Debunks the assumption that knowledge is better acquired when provided in a context where it can be used. Sets forth a program…

Investigated how 50 preschoolers evaluated the appropriateness of excluding boys and girls from two types of activities and two types of future roles across different exclusion contexts. Found that straightforward gender-based exclusion was judged wrong. Decisions were justified on the basis of moral reasons. However, children used both moral and…

Article discusses various issues of a situated pedagogical practice by examining one teacher's experiences teaching during the U.S.-Iraq war. His course highlighted ways that cultural constructions of oppressive discourses enabled a plunge into war, looking at how and why context-specific interventions against oppression were considered and…

This study investigated whether 9-month-olds used phonotactic cues to segment words from fluent speech. Results suggested that 9-month-olds use probabilistic phonotactics to segment speech into words, and that high- probability between-word clusters are interpreted as both word onsets and word offsets. (Author/KB)