In this article we discuss the definition of emotionally disturbed (ED) from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, with a specific focus on the clause contained in this definition, which is designed to exclude from special education services students who are considered to be socially maladjusted (SM). The history of the SM exclusionary…

The Attuned Representation Model of eating-disorder etiology and symptom maintenance is a comprehensive model that can effectively guide prevention and treatment efforts by addressing individual, cultural, and interactive issues. The model integrates the risk factors related to the onset of eating-disordered behaviors (i.e., biological,…

Students with special learning problems, like all children, need to learn social studies. The challenge, however, is how to provide access to social studies content in a general education setting to children with mild disabilities. For at least 20 years the traditional textbook-based instructional approach has been found to be ineffective. The…

This chapter describes two emerging theories that inform career counseling and explores how they can strengthen student success programs for underrepresented populations. The chapter also describes several effective programs and services that support traditionally underrepresented students as they prepare for, succeed in, and make the transition…

As a high school principal, the author came to realize that the traditional teacher observation and evaluation model did not help teachers become reflective and improve their practice. Because his own use of brief, frequent principal walk-throughs had given him valuable insights into the need for instructional improvements, he decided to offer…

This study examined how high school seniors construct decision-making strategies for choosing a college to attend. To comprehend their decision-making strategies, we chose to examine this process through the theoretical lens of bounded rationality, which brings to light the complexity in constructing a college choice decision-making strategy…

Youth today face many health, educational, and social challenges not experienced at such epidemic levels by previous generations of young people. By providing collaborative, comprehensive services that address student needs and promote learning and healthy development, a coordinated school health team can help students succeed in school, as well…

Longitudinal, student performance-based, value-added accountability models have become popular of late and continue to enjoy increasing popularity. Such models require student data to be vertically scaled across wide grade and developmental ranges so that the value added to student growth/achievement by teachers, schools, and districts may be…

A strategic instruction model introduced into adult basic education classrooms yields insight into the feasibility of using direct and explicit instruction with adults with learning disabilities or other cognitive barriers to learning. Ecobehavioral assessment was used to describe and compare instructor-learner interaction patterns during learning…

We discuss the development of an instructional design model, WisCom (Wisdom Communities), based on socio-constructivist and sociocultural learning philosophies and distance education principles for the development of online wisdom communities, and the application and evaluation of the model in an online graduate course in the USA. The WisCom model…

The number of people who experience a brain injury increases every year, and 40 percent of all cases involve children (Hill, 1999). In fact, this high rate has led brain injury to become the most commonly acquired disability among children (Bigge, Best, & Heller, 2001), leading to a variety of primary disabilities that affect cognition,…

This article explores the relationship between student engagement and student self-assessment. It reports on research that has reconceptualised ways of understanding levels of student engagement among primary school learners who live in poor communities. These ways of understanding have been influential in the development of a student…

Many early childhood teachers report lacking confidence to teach science. Today, science education is defined as "doing science", as opposed to memorization of facts (Seefeldt & Galper, 2002). This paper discusses developmentally appropriate practices in the context of teaching science. Knowledge of child development, individual differences and…

A motor task that requires fine control of upper limb movements and a cognitive task that requires executive processing--first performing them separately and then concurrently--was performed by 18 young and 18 older adults. The motor task required participants to tap alternatively on two targets, the sizes of which varied systematically. The…

This paper describes part of a project called Modeling Across the Curriculum which is a large-scale research study in 15 schools across the United States. The specific data presented and discussed here in this paper is based on BioLogica, a hypermodel, interactive environment for learning genetics, which was implemented in multiple classes in…