Examined links between parenting and preschoolers' peer competence. Found that parent-child play was associated with boys', but not girls', peer competence. Mothers' coaching was associated with girls', but not boys', competence. Mothers' or fathers' involvement in child-peer play predicted lower or higher child competence, respectively. Mothers'…

Data from the 1990 Ecuadorian census indicate that expected fertility-reducing effects of women's education, student status, and labor force participation were lessened in the Amazon as a consequence of its family-based economy, class structure, and high-fertility demographic regime. Development of the extractive periphery in Ecuador is…

Discusses aspects of context from a relevance-theoretic perspective and considers how this may lead to a better understanding of how language learners recover verbal input. Proposes that the way context is defined affects (1) the relationship between knowledge of language and context and (2) the way speakers access assumptions in everyday…

Investigates the procedural understanding of first-year university science students in South Africa. Explores ideas related to the reliability of experimental data and discusses the types of reasoning underlying the responses. (DDR)

Examines the transferability of five Japanese indirect request strategies to corresponding English request contexts. Findings indicate that the Japanese strategies were differentially transferable and the transferability of each first-language request strategy was determined by interaction between the politeness and conventionality encoded in each…

Reviews the academic literature of distance education that has considered whether the media and technologies of education affect learning and finds the conventional answer is in the negative. Also describes this issue in literature in the following fields: neurology, mass communications, and feminist approaches to the situated nature of knowledge.…

Responses of 138 third and fourth graders to failures and successes in mathematics computation were studied in 4 experimental conditions varied by social learning context and modeling. The collaborative learning context increased student persistence after failure and dynamism after success, and modeling increased persistence and dynamism in an…

Describes how context influenced 58 beginning school principals in urban, suburban, and rural Louisiana school districts. Results are presented as storylines that demonstrate social issues extending beyond any single district or any one context variable such as race or gender. Commonalities among the job tasks and work attitudes are discussed.…

Describes the Optimal Learning Environment (OLE) Curriculum, a resource for teachers of Spanish-speaking children, which looks for the upper range of the bilingual child's academic, linguistic, and social skills. Details principles governing the OLE curriculum, including the effect of students' sociocultural background and learning handicaps on…

Maintains that the studies presented in this collection combine cultural with political analyses to illuminate educational processes. Elaborates on the key constructs, including contextualization with agency, sociopolitical dynamics in designing school practices, and personal self-definition in relation to sociocultural context. (Author/KB)

A study of 70 pairs of supervisory teachers and teacher interns at the University of Saskatchewan examined contextual supervision in the mentorship of student teachers' oral questioning skills. Findings indicate that supervisory skills improved, especially when supervisors adjusted their leadership styles to match protege development levels, and…

Argues that the work of Jurgen Habermas offers a means of blending modern and postmodern elements in the field of educational administration. Discusses Habermas' guiding principles, which include: (1) consensus can always be challenged; (2) power must be equalized among those communicating; and (3) the only force that should prevail is that of a…

Examined sixth grader's views on the usefulness of learning activities, drawing on Dewey's theoretical formulations. Student-identified activities that either facilitated or did not facilitate learning suggested the components of these activities that may be most salient to students at this age and underlined the difficulty of identifying…

Assessed links between free-time activities in middle childhood and school grades, conduct, and depression symptoms concurrently and 2 years later; also explored 2 mechanisms that might underlie activity-adjustment links. Found links between the nature of children's free-time activities and their adjustment. Social contexts of free-time activities…

Examined the world views of children after they had experienced a natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, in Florida in 1992. Responses of 127 fourth and fifth graders indicated differences and similarities in the children's world views by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. Discusses implications for promoting science literacy for all…