This article reports a study of the communication development (especially concerning effect of context on content and mean length of utterance) within a family consisting of hearing parents, two hearing daughters, and a newly adopted deaf daughter (aged 2:8-3:0). Findings suggested that play contexts were more conducive to language acquisition…

Examined perceptions of personal control in 1,267 individuals in 4 generations of families participating in multiple cohort, longitudinal study spanning 1971-91. Over 20 years, mean levels of personal control became more internal among 560 individuals who participated in all measurements, probably reflecting environmental factors. Found…

Data compiled from kindergartners' writing samples, records of kindergartners' social interactions, and interviews of kindergartners indicated that teacher behavior, student interactions, classroom materials and environment, and student perspectives on journal writing influenced student choice of topics for journal writing. (ME)

This study investigated students' learning during specific units, linking it to teaching methods. Researchers observed students, recorded classes, and conducted pretests, posttests, and follow-up, examining content learned, content understanding, class memories, and learning experiences. Results indicated critical elements necessary for students…

Describes characteristics and styles of teaching among student teachers and addresses the context in which training and teacher practice occurs, noting the teaching theory underlying training activities. The results of a study on the teaching practice component of the training of primary teachers in Papua New Guinea are presented. (SM)

Evaluation of strategic planning programs is illustrated using the examples of statewide forest resource planning programs implemented by state governments in 1986. Client-based perspectives were studied via a survey of 216 officials affected by the forestry planning program. Considering planning's context, process, outputs, and performance helped…

The teacher reform debate in Australia is informed by contradictory individualist and work perspectives and assumptions. The challenge for policy is harmonizing perspectives to develop a basis for the practical politics of educational reform. The individualist perspective complements corporate managerialism, whereas the work perspective raises…

This study of the social interactions of 37 adults with severe disabilities in 18 supported employment programs found that workers in individual and enclave programs had more contact with nondisabled persons than did members of work crews, whereas there were no differences between individual and enclave sites. (Author/JDD)

Freudenthal was the founder of realistic mathematics education, in which reality serves as a source of applications and learning. Takes a newspaper article about reproducing a Van Gogh painting using plants in a field to exemplify a rich context problem containing elements of all areas of elementary school mathematics. (MDH)

Responds to comments about educational research models by Ernest E. House and Cleo H. Cherryholmes with quotations from the writings of John Dewey. The points of agreement and disagreement among Dewey and these critics make it evident that theory and practice cannot be separated in educational research. (SLD)

Compares teacher/student relationships in a traditional teacher-controlled seventh-grade math classroom with those in another classroom divided into groups working with "fraction kits" while the teacher wanders about. The difference is the second teacher's capacity for listening amid creative chaos. A mechanistic, management-oriented classroom…

Suggests that contexts may be useful in mathematics instruction in relation to learning transfer and that the factors that determine whether a context is useful are complex. Discusses the context effect, learning in context, how well students identify with tasks taken out of an adult world, and the effects of ethnomathematics. (MDH)

Concepts of authority with regard to type of authority directive and social context were studied for 30 male and 30 female elementary school students in 3 age groups from kindergarten through grade 6. Children conceptualize authority with respect to social position and within the bounds of specific social contexts. (SLD)

Teacher knowledge--indeed teachers themselves--is always unfinished and incomplete. Knowledge never exists outside of a context of use. The shift to seeing teaching as site of cultural production invites the question, What structures of human relationship will scientists and science educators construct in and through the work they perform? The…

Analyzes the interaction of text and context in a multimedia Quechua-language program and makes suggestions for teaching foreign languages through multimedia technology. (Author/VWL)