This study addressed whether students could change their reading rate when presented with two clearly explicated purposes for reading. Results indicated that students could adapt their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. (Author/GK)

The acquisition by preadolescent and late adolescent students of two kinds of information from brief texts was assessed: premise information and inference information. Age differences were obtained in inference performance. However, when the texts provided sufficient contextual support, the inference performance of preadolescents was equivalent to…

Reports on the positive effects of free writing that is followed by rewriting. (RL)

In the four-school stratified sample of eleventh graders, the females scored significantly higher in vocational attitude. For both sexes, the relationship between overall self-esteem level and vocational attitude maturity was significant. The self-concept variables contributing to vocational attitude maturity in each sex were identified.…

In a survey of grade 11 students in Alberta (n=1,047), 35% preferred university career paths, 18.5% community college, 21.9% technical institutes/apprenticeship. Many contemplated career choices for more than two years. They had limited knowledge of the work force but were developing positive work habits. Parents and peers were important career…

Investigated relationship of career goal and self-esteem among 221 high school sophomores and juniors. Students completed Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; teachers rated students' self-esteem using Self-Esteem Rating Scale for Children. Found that, on both instruments, adolescents with some career goals had significantly higher self-esteem than did…

Investigates the differential effects of ownership opportunities and instructional support on the writing-task engagement of high school students reporting low-, mid-, and high-levels of writing self-efficacy. (RAE)

Argues that writing instruction is most effective when instruction focuses on inquiry which includes: utilizing concrete data, solving problems by using thinking strategies inherent in various writing tasks, focusing on student-centered problems, and encouraging student interaction with a minimum of teacher lecture. (JAD)

Examines the intersection of classroom inquiry and educational policy by asking the question: "Can teacher-research become a vehicle for creating just and politically sensitive accounts of how educational policies affect real lives?" Shares classroom research conducted with students receiving special assistance to pass a state-mandated writing…

Reports in detail on a year-long case study of multiple-model use at grade 11. Suggests that students who socially negotiated the shared and unshared attributes of common analogical models for atoms, molecules, and chemical bonds used these models more consistently in their explanations. (Author/CCM)

Investigates the developmental changes in the contributions of comprehension ability and the meta-cognitive control of several study strategies (selection, memory, monitoring) to competence in studying among average and above-average seventh and eleventh-grade students. Indicates that the ability to comprehend and meta-cognitive control of study…

Informal reasoning fallacies are violations of critical discussion norms. As epistemological understanding of knowledge justification appears to underlie the informal reasoning skills of argument construction and evaluation, it was hypothesized that adolescents with greater epistemological sophistication would be more able to identify informal…

The habit of reading develops over a period of time. This study explored reading habits across a wide range of students. An open-ended survey of reading habits involved 242 participants from grades 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, undergraduate non-education majors, undergraduate elementary majors, and graduate reading majors. As data were analyzed, themes emerged…

In the nearly two years that the author spent on community-college campuses in California, New York, Illinois, and Colorado, he met hundreds of dedicated but often frustrated teachers and administrators. In this article, the author describes what he experienced in the community colleges, identifies the shortcomings of community colleges, and…

Background: Great efforts are made to develop and implement contact activities for groups in conflict, yet studies of effects of planned contact interventions yielded mixed results. Previous attempts to explain why contact interventions do not fulfill their promise focused on the contact itself. However, the main focus of the present study was the…