While human emotions are often considered instinctive, this paper examines the notion that indifference to events or circumstances which might seem to have a prima facie claim to emotional significance is related to the narrative construction of those events or circumstances in the life of the observer, and is not a result of absolute stimulus…

The changing demographics in the United States have contributed to the increase of the preexisting multicultural nature of the American society. To actively participate in their meaningful civic function, individuals need to be more sensitive to the contextual demands of the communicative event as they relate to language, culture, ethnicity, and…

Learning Network Design (LND) is a socially oriented methodology for construction of cooperative distance learning environments. The paper advances a social constructivist approach to learning in which learning and teaching are seen as a process of active communication, interpretation, and negotiation; offers a view of information technology as a…

This book is a collection of works by mathematics educators from Spain with an emphasis on preservice primary teacher education. This book aims to promote reflection upon and discussion of research issues as well as put out a call to action. Articles include: (1) "Contexts and Learning to Teach Mathematics. The Case of Prospective Elementary…

Recent studies of teachers and teaching pay greater attention to relationships among teaching contexts, teachers' practical knowledge, and enacted curricula. As a contribution to this body of work, this study grappled with the problem of understanding the knowledge teachers use to create curricula within workplace demands. Survey, participant…

The process of students' conceptual change was evaluated during a computer-supported physics unit in a Grade 10 science class. Computer simulation programs were developed to confront students' alternative conceptions in mechanics. A conceptual test was administered as pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests to determine students' conceptual change.…

Data from the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) are analyzed for eighth graders to distinguish the characteristics of low-achieving groups and the independent predictors of low test scores. Results provide a basis for evaluating the adequacy of the NAEP for these…

Reflecting the complexity of the early childhood education enterprise--classroom practice, teacher preparation, research, and conceptualization--this volume reflects an examination of the literature for illumination as to the value of early education theory and its usefulness to practice. The book has 10 chapters divided into three parts that…

Any model of reading must take into account the role of the language system in reading. Readers' subjectivities and the reading position taken up in a text can be explicated by demonstrating how texts function in context and how readers function in social situations to construct possible meanings. Components of this model include text and context…

Critical evaluation of instructional materials is an important but often neglected aspect of instructional preparation. This study proposes evaluation that is more theoretically grounded in sociocultural and context-sensitive bases than are many evaluation guides. A new instrument was developed and applied to materials for teacher education as…

Previous research has shown that, unlike novice physicians' performance, diagnostic quality of expert physicians improves when contextual information (the "Enabling Conditions") about a patient is available. The present study was designed to explore these findings further by systematically varying the typicality of enabling conditions…

This paper reports on a study of situational influences of affect and goal value on social problem-solving in middle childhood. It was expected that the adequacy of any particular social problem-solving process would be reduced by increases in goal intensity. On the basis of prior testing, two social goals of high value and two of low value were…

In spite of a mandate to create educational equality, the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) has not eliminated inequalities in school performance scores, and the problem may even be getting worse. The objective of this study is to determine the disparities that exist among Kentucky's eight Service Center regions. The analysis uses school…

Whether boys and girls perform differently on mathematics estimation items with a picture format (applied context [AC] items) compared with items with a numbers-only (NC) format was studied when effects of computational skill, conceptual knowledge, and quantitative ability were controlled. Subjects were approximately 80,000 students from grades 4…

This paper revisits the literature on the nature of school organizations and presents a view of secondary schools as complex social systems, as opposed to bureaucratic-rational structures. Research was conducted into three Western Australia secondary schools planning to implement school-based decision making and planning procedures. The…