For a successful kindergarten experience, children need to develop certain social and learning skills before entering school. Social skills include cooperation, responsibility, perseverance, and independence. Auditory and visual discrimination and motor and language skills are important for a positive learning experience. (DF)

The importance of teaching mildly handicapped adolescents to respond appropriately in social situations is emphasized, five important considerations in selecting social skills curricula for this population are discussed, three examples of social skills projects and their products are described, and 12 specific curricula summarized. (CL)

Findings of the comparison of spatial role taking, social role taking, and referential communication in 56 congenitally visually impaired and sighted children (seven to nine years old) revealed that visually impaired Ss need not differ from sighted Ss in cognitive social functioning if they have had significant verbal interaction with others.…

Social routines based on rhyming verses combined with co-active participation with adults were developed to permit visually impaired young children with additional handicaps to associate communicative responses with attention to and action on objects. (Author/CL)

The address highlights research findings on the importance of social support on mentally retarded persons. Elements of the social support network, including peer friendships and relationships with care providers are considered. Future concerns are seen to include issues of social support that may on the surface conflict with normalization. (CL)

Authors explore some newly developed concepts about learning and discuss the influence of these concepts on current investigations of cognitive development in children. (HS)

The problems examined in this study were (1) age differences in grasp of psychological causality during middle childhood, (2) the exploration of possible mediating abilities of a physical-logical nature accounting for such age differences and (3) relations between cognition of psychological causality and intentionality in moral judgment.…

The case of Africa, in terms of development and democratic prospects, encounters a number of stubborn hurdles, and are increasingly more difficult to overcome. This paper, while agreeing with a number of leading Africanists, who are calling for the efficient repair of Africa's political systems, without which other components of the national and…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the ability to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively. SEL provides schools with a framework for preventing problems and promoting students'…

This companion to "Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader's Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs" provides information on each of the 80 programs in the review. The information is intended to give schools and individuals a better overall understanding of each program. The description includes the program's…

"Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader's Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning Programs" introduces the concepts of SEL and comprehensive approaches to SEL, describes the value of such programming to the essential academic mission of schools, and suggests how to approach implementing such programming. This packet contains…

The current interest in values and social conventions stems mainly from an uneasy feeling about people whose behavior fails to live up to the social conventions that are upheld in society. Many people are calling for values and social conventions to be reasserted and education is expected to make an important contribution to this process.…

This report details one piece of a larger, integrated research plan to provide scientific evidence on the effectiveness of fine arts interventions in promoting positive change in youth. This report, Phase 3, states that, building on prior work, interview data were collected and analyzed from 35 arts interventions in the Los Angeles (California)…

Fourteen make and 14 female undergraduates who volunteered for a program to increase their dating effectiveness were matched for six dates, each date with a different opposite-sex subject. Heterosexual interaction frequency and subjective measures of comfort increased significantly with treatment. (Author)

Jean Reid described a recent three week tour of China, from the Hongkong border in the south, through Shanghai to Chenghow, in the centre. She took the photographs on the journey, which focused on the great social revolution taking place in China and the enormous educational development at the base of that change. (Editor/RK)