Issues related to the retrieval context set by rereading advance organizers (AOs) before recall tests were examined in six experiments with 57 seventh graders and 323 undergraduates. Only rereading the AO significantly affected recall. AO theory and a general perspective on encoding and retrieval contexts are discussed. (TJH)

Examines the reading practices and socially influenced responses of six eighth graders in a literature discussion group. Recounts the responses of the students' interpretive community. (MS)

Interviewed mothers about spanking infants and toddlers to determine beliefs and practice and relationships between factors affecting these beliefs and practices. Found that context of the spanking affects spanking beliefs and practice and that beliefs about spanking rather than impulse largely explain the prevalence of spanking for children under…

Comparison of tasks, job control, and work-related personality traits of 255 British headteachers and 20 elementary school principals in Texas showed that context factors of the jobs were similar, but that British headteachers presided over smaller school organizations and functioned more like executive officers than did Texas counterparts. (SLD)

Analysis of observations of 70 adults making public verbal threats to physically punish or hurt children indicated that adults typically attributed unshared responsibility for group problems to the child and normalized their own aggression by acting as though nothing unusual had happened. The role of the ongoing interaction and the social context…

Argues that researchers must broaden conceptual frameworks, broaden samples, and broaden methods used in the study of rejected peers in light of Merten's work (PS 524 830). Suggests that conceptual frameworks must consider the full range of characteristics that contribute to peer status, and be sensitive to contextual factors that shape peer group…

Explores how the school classroom context influenced the expression of one prospective science teachers' beliefs about science and science teaching. Using the comparative method of data analysis, four interrelated categories of a student teacher's experience were generated: (1) beliefs about teaching science; (2) constrained teaching and…

Suggests that social scientists need to move out of the laboratory and study human development in the full complexity of real-world problems, which includes the perspectives of practitioners. Suggests that the social science field needs to accept a problem-focused orientation rather than a discipline-focused one for studying human development to…

Adolescents (n=483 fifth to ninth graders) carried pagers and reported their affect, arousal, and psychological involvement in activities, including music listening, when signaled at random times. Results indicated that adolescent responses to music are a function of the interaction between the listening context and the type of music heard. (SLD)

This article argues that minimal pairs do not merit as much attention as they receive in pronunciation instruction. There are other aspects of pronunciation that are of greater importance, and there are other ways of teaching vowel and consonant pronunciation. (13 references) (VWL)

A reflection-construction model of relations between social perception and social reality is presented that explicitly specifies several ways in which social perception may relate to social reality. Evidence supporting this model also supports a weaker version of the social-constructivist view. (SLD)

Classroom applications and implications of Kantor's field model and the concept of "setting events" for students with behavioral disorders are discussed, with attention to: current methods of assessing the effects of setting events on students' behavioral problems, methods for intervening in setting events, and research issues for assessment and…

Examines context as a factor in personal information management systems to suggest how it may influence classification decisions and ultimately retrieval. A study of seven managers is described that explored the factors that influence the way individuals manage electronic documents, and results are compared with an earlier study of physical…

Argues that current thinking about science teaching and conceptual change needs to be counterbalanced by contextual or cultural constructivist ideas. A collaborative view should include the sociological study of cultural milieus in which scientific ideas arise. The logic of discovery from a sociological point of view implies that conceptual change…

Study investigated antecedents of achievement attributions and achievement values in ninth and twelfth graders who named an achievement important to them as a basis for eliciting success attributions and values. As expected, results indicated that students were more motivated to achieve in some contexts than in others. (SM)