This study is about engagement in adult literacy education. Engagement is mental effort focused on learning. It is important to understand how and why adult learners engage in literacy instruction because engagement is a precondition to learning progress. Researchers who study engagement conceive of it in different ways. Some focus on engagement…

This book examines socialization science, which is the empirical effort to understand how children acquire traits from their families and cultures. This work proposes that one part of the family influence process--broad differences in family environments, except for those that are neglectful, abusive, or without opportunity--may exert little…

This cross-cultural study was designed to overcome some limitations of previous research by not only inquiring into general attitudes toward physical punishment, but also by obtaining information concerning the context (for example, situation, type of misbehavior, and form of physical punishment). A cross-cultural comparison was made of attitudes…

This study used community contextual variables to investigate adolescent academic achievement, examining school districts and individual schools with 8th grade students. The first analyses were conducted for school year 1997-98. The school district model was replicated for 1996-97. Data came from the Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau…

This article examines the contextual supervision (CS) model that has been developed and applied in several practicum settings of teacher education programs over the past 12 years. The study synthesizes the research findings on the potential effectiveness of CS in assisting faculty supervisors and classroom cooperating teachers with the task of…

Violence in the family is being increasingly identified as a societal problem that has multiple short- and long-term effects on children. This book focuses on the relationship between different types of family violence and the resulting impact of violence on the child. Chapter One discusses the definition, history, and societal costs of family…

This book is about teachers' professional communities in U.S. high schools at the end of the 20th century and the significant differences in their response to the challenges of teaching. It describes how the work of teaching differed across three distinct types of communities found and high schools and subject departments studied in the early…

The Media Management and Economics section of the proceedings contains the following 6 selected papers: "Audience Economics of European Union Public Service Broadcasters: Assessing Performance in Competitive Markets" (Robert GH. Picard); "Remembering the DuMont Network: A Business Case Study Approach" (Walter S. McDowell);…

Addresses the notion of "interaction" within performance-based language assessment, arguing that a broader professional view of performance in second-language achievement assessment is needed to permit a focus on the social dimension of interaction. The article focuses on the assessment of spoken language through interviews and role-plays within…

Examines race-related factors of racial discrimination, racial context, and having White friends and these factors' impact on life satisfaction for 312 African American adults in Detroit (Michigan). Results show that experiencing discrimination is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction, while attending school in predominantly white…

Describes a text and some children's readings of a fictional animal story in which a bossy rooster is "tamed" by a female sheep dog. The article's analysis of the children's discussions of the story focuses on modality to trace their acceptance of "credibility" in the text with respect to the construction of gender and the story's resolution. (23…

Compares the acquisition of vocabulary by Dutch advanced students of French reading a French story in one of three text reading conditions: marginal glosses; dictionary; or control. Results indicate that frequency of word occurrence fosters incidental vocabulary learning more when the first two conditions exist. (40 references) (Author/CK)

Evaluates competing proposals for the underspecification of phonological representations against the facts of phonemic acquisition. Results indicate that context-sensitive radical underspecification provides a plausible account of each developmental stage and the transition between stages with minimal grammar change. (36 references) (Author/CK)

Examined the nature and extent of the school principal's role in affecting student learning. Found no direct effects from the principal's instructional leadership, but did find an indirect influence on overall school effectiveness through actions that shape the school's learning environment. (ET)

Studies with 8 children in the United Kingdom and 30 in Finland show that verbal interactions of children doing collaborative writing with a computer are highly task-related and characterized by exchange of information, questioning, judging, organizing, and composing. Exploratory and argumentational use of language was found to be low. (SLD)