What are "full-service community schools," and what do they have to do with youth development? Community schools are those that have been intentionally transformed into neighborhood hubs and that are open all the time to children and their families. In these buildings, a range of support services is provided by community agencies to help…

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accredits more than half of the colleges of education in the United States. Several of its standards require teacher preparation programs to emphasize diversity in their curricula and to demonstrate that they are developing a professional environment wherein acceptance of varying…

In response to the 2000 Virginia state writing prompt, eighth grade students wrote a letter of advice to a sixth grader coming to middle school for the first time. A purposeful sample of more than 10,000 writing responses was collected. Content analysis of a random sample of 350 responses revealed themes of advice for students negotiating the…

This case study examined the learning outcomes of three learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) enrolled in different Writing for Academic Purposes courses. Of the many learning outcomes observed, some express self-perceived intrapersonal and interpersonal changes, which in previous research have been named "by-products" of…

Significant adults who support and teach children are only too aware of the effects of adverse experiences on intellectual, social and personal development. Less easily predicted, however, is a small number of young people who, despite many negative experiences, seem to make a considerable success of their lives. In this paper, the intriguing…

Social, physical, emotional, and cognitive developmental rates for gifted children do not correspond to each other and--except for physical development--do not necessarily correspond to age peer norms. Giftedness itself causes asynchrony; that is, it causes children to be out of sync with other components. In the classroom, the teacher is…

Recently, researchers and policymakers have begun to question the role of professional education in learning to teach. This inquiry reflects skepticism about the contributions of teacher education, which is, in turn, fueled by popular ideas about the work of teaching: teachers are born not made, or that "real" learning begins once novices arrive…

According to Gordon and Bridglall, the ability to learn is more of a developed human capacity than a fixed aptitude with which one is born. They argue that the emergence of academic ability is associated with exposure to specialized cultures that privilege the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that schools reward. Children who are born to and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of student-faculty informal interpersonal relationships on student's intellectual and personal development. An instrument developed by Pascarella and Terenzini (1977) based on Tinto's model, was applied on 252 students (100 males and 152 females) who were enrolled in bachelor programs at…

This study presents a longitudinal examination of the development of reading and reading-related skills of 22 Grade 4 children identified as having reading disabilities (RD) who had been followed since kindergarten. The analyses were conducted to investigate the patterns of emergence of RD as well as reading ability and risk status across the 5…

The current study modeled developmental trajectories of ethnic identity exploration and affirmation and belonging from middle to late adolescence (ages 15-18) and examined how these trajectories varied according to ethnicity, gender, immigrant status, and perceived level of discrimination. The sample consisted of 135 urban low-income Black and…

This study examined a model of the simultaneous and interactive influence of social context, psychosocial attitudes, and individual maturity on the prediction of urban adolescent drug dealing. Five factors were found to significantly increase adolescents' opportunity for drug selling: low parental monitoring, poor neighborhood conditions, low…

Leadership is a hot-button issue these days. Reformers depend on it. The public believes that it is what schools need more of. And private sector CEOs think they know exactly what it is and are anxious to share that knowledge with the "poor unwashed masses" of educational leaders. It is not surprising, then, that so many people are…

In this article, the author discusses several research reports demonstrating the existence of sex differences in cognitive function and language skills. Although dozens of studies published in the past five years have demonstrated dramatic sex differences in autonomic function, the educational literature has not emphasized those studies and their…

Adult piano students (N = 711) from 24 states across the U.S. rated the existence and importance of 31 potential benefits of adult piano study. Benefits selected from existing adult music and leisure-benefit research were organized into three categories: Personal, Skill, and Social/Cultural. The category of Skill Benefits was the most-agreed-upon…