According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly half of the enrolled college students in the United States of America (USA) are 24 years of age or older. Over one-third are at least 35 years old, which translates into over four million students being a part of growing mature and/or non-traditional student population. Women…

The purpose of this study was to use a systems approach to examine informal communications, meaning those occurring outside of scheduled meetings, among stakeholders in a preschool early intervention program. This investigation expands the discussion of how occupational therapy treatment decisions are made in educational settings by using a…

Individuals actively and continually construct the knowledge required for their working lives. Two outcomes arise from this constructive process: (i) individual change (i.e. learning) and (ii) the remaking of culturally-derived practices comprising work. These arise through a relational interdependence between the contributions and agency of the…

The current study investigated gender differences in the relationship between sources of perceived support (parent, teacher, classmate, friend, school) and psychological and academic adjustment in a sample of 636 (49% male) middle school students. Longitudinal data were collected at two time points in the same school year. The study provided…

This article reports on the experiences of deaf and hard of hearing students at a Queensland university, which offers an extensive deaf student support program. Seventy-two current students and graduates since the program's inception twenty years ago completed a survey about their experiences, highlights, challenges and use of communication tools…

An exploration of the mediation strategies applied to social networking tools for purposes of enhancing social presence for students participating in online course work. The article includes a review of the literature, specific examples from the authors' professional practice and recommendations for creating a positive social experience for online…

This article discusses a participatory action research (PAR) project carried out with three transnational Latina youth in northern California and how the university researcher incorporated Chicana feminist strategies in the study. PAR and Chicana feminism place at the heart of research the knowledge that ordinary people produce, referring to this…

This paper presents the results of an exploratory, small-scale qualitative research enquiry into the perceptions and experiences of young people in communities afflicted by deprivation in Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The context within which we address this focus contains a culture reputed to involve sectarianism, territoriality and gangs.…

A case study of one student is used to explore three instructional approaches that draw teachers' attention to reading as a social experience that involves culture and identity. These approaches draw on New Literacy Studies, children's media practices, and critical race theory and provide insights on how to better serve struggling readers.

Much of the evidence from the West has shown links between children's developing self-control (executive function), their social experiences, and their social understanding (Carpendale & Lewis, 2006, chapters 5 and 6), across a range of cultures including China. This chapter describes four studies conducted in three Oriental cultures,…

According to the US Department of Education (2001), Black college students, when compared with other racial groups, have the highest drop out rate at both two-year and four-year colleges. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine factors that might place Black students at risk of discontinuing their higher education. A path analysis was…

Individuals' dispositions have long been held to direct and energise cognition in ways that shape how they experience and respond to events in the social world. Therefore, a consideration of these dispositions is likely to be helpful in understanding the inter-psychological processes between individual and social world that frame contemporary…

Children's understanding of cognition increases greatly between early childhood and adolescence. This increase provides a developmental bridge between young children's understanding of mental states to adolescents' and adults' epistemological reflection. The author presents a framework for describing developmental changes in children's…

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a study conducted to investigate how the attributes of 3-D technology such as avatars, 3-D space, and comic style bubble dialogue boxes affect participants' social, cognitive, and teaching presences in a blended problem-based learning environment. The community of inquiry model was adopted…

The article begins with two brief theoretical descriptions of a pedagogy of desire vis-a-vis the Christian Bible. The first of these is a poem; the second summarizes the conversation constituted by four quite different books: the "Confessions" by Augustine of Hippo, "Freud & Philosophy" by Paul Ricoeur, "Pedagogy of…