When pioneering longitudinal studies of child development extended into adulthood, they generated issues that could not be addressed satisfactorily by available theories, including the recognition that individual lives are influenced by their ever-changing historical context and that human development concepts should apply to processes across the…

Used a modification of Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (1996) task involving interpretation of novel nouns to test whether 18- to 28-month-olds' smart word learning derived from general attention and memory processes rather than knowledge about the communicative intents of others. Findings similar to those of Akhtar and colleagues suggest that…

Because of continuous centering and recentering, paradigm shifts posited by Kuhn are not really changes; they are commensurate. New theories are simply old theories remade and renamed. The alternative is to consider conceptual diversity, abandoning the idea of a paradigm or a singular field of theory and practice. (Contains 27 references.) (MLH)

Argues for scholarship that investigates leadership practice; specifically, the practice of leading classroom instruction. Articulates a distributed perspective, grounded in activity theory and distributed cognition, to frame such investigations. Suggests that school leadership is best understood as a distributed practice stretched over the…

This article discusses the teaching of Chinese in the general, social, and political context of foreign-language education. It points to the fallacy of assuming that the instructional approaches used in the more commonly taught languages are appropriate for Chinese as well. (12 references) (CK)

A longitudinal study of students (n=250) following the Salters Advanced Chemistry course probed a range of chemical ideas including the exothermicity of bond formation and the development of thinking about covalent, ionic, and intermolecular bonds. At the start, many students demonstrated misunderstandings about these chemical ideas, but their…

Describes one mentor teacher's development in understanding the influence of instructional context on her ability to successfully mentor, comparing patterns identified to novice teachers' developmental stages. Results reveal that learning to mentor is a conscious process of induction into a different teaching context and does not emerge naturally…

Presents a conceptual model of multiple dimensions of identity, which depicts a core sense of self or one's personal identity. Intersecting circles surrounding the core identity represent significant identity dimensions and contextual influences. The model evolved from a grounded theory study of a group of 10 women college students ranging in age…

Describes the main lines of research in behavioral creativity and comments on approaches that have concentrated on personality-related or cognitive aspects of creativity or that have studied attempts to stimulate creativity. In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the human capacity for producing new and original ideas in a social…

Teachers in constructivist mathematics classrooms actively engage students in the learning process. Although constructivist teachers use different methods, most employ five contextual teaching strategies: relating, experiencing, applying, cooperating, and transferring. Students learn that even in mathematics, the "right" answer can be a matter of…

Discusses the successful treatment of echolalia in a 15-year-old girl with Rubinstein-Tabyi syndrome, a congenital anomaly characterized by mental and growth retardation. Intervention included a functional assessment of varied echolalic conditions, provision of a therapeutic environment that minimized echolalic responses, and reinforcement of…

"Leading cultures" has a double meaning denoting a split between school leaders' behavior when leading and the leadership function of different subcultures. This paper explores this split; discusses transactions, encounters, and administrators' tacit knowledge when executing leadership; and illustrates school leadership's reciprocity and…

Examined whether patterns of gender differential item functioning (DIF) in parcels of items are influenced by changes in item position. Findings for more than 2,000 college freshmen taking a test of mathematics suggest that the amounts of gender DIF and DIF present in item parcels tend not to be influenced by changes in item position. (SLD)

This article proposes a pedagogy based upon congregational studies to further the contextualization of education in both seminary and congregational settings. Christian congregations and theological seminaries comprise two overlapping yet distinctive "communities of practice" in which teaching and learning the Bible constitutes a primary, even…

This chapter defines key terms and orients readers to the ideas explored in the rest of this volume.