This study compared the perception of self-competence of immigrant Asian-American, Asian-Indian, Hispanic, native European-American, and African-American preschoolers. Self-competence is defined by Harter as the "feeling of confidence in achieving certain tasks." The development of self-competence emerges gradually as children acquire greater…

Parents and relative caregivers of children with severe emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often report high levels of strain associated with the care of that child. This study compares how parents and other relative caregivers, and different family caregiver groups, experience strain. Overall, we found that Medicaid care-givers (n = 648)…

This study examines the extent to which a teacher's level of expertise in the subject of a technical paper affects the teacher's reading and evaluation of it. Four engineering teachers and four writing teachers were asked to read aloud the same three student papers and to say aloud their thoughts as they read. The engineering teachers read papers…

The phonologically transparent Persian orthography is normally transcribed with two distinct spellings; words spelled with vowels (letters) transcribed as a fixed part of the spelling (transparent) and words spelled with vowels (diacritics) omitted (opaque). Three groups of Persian readers, namely developmental dyslexics (n = 29, mean age = 9.4,…

In policy research a frequent aim is to estimate treatment effects separately by subgroups. This endeavor becomes a methodological challenge when the subgroups are defined by post-treatment, rather than pre-treatment, variables because if analyses are performed in the same way as with pre-treatment variables, causal interpretations are no longer…

Introduction: Educator-derived, predetermined instructional objectives are integral to the traditional instructional model and form the linkage between instructional design and postinstruction evaluation. The traditional model does not consider unanticipated learning outcomes. We explored the contribution of learner-identified desired outcomes…

As distance education becomes a more common practice in teacher preparation, it is critical that students completing these programs be held to the same standards as students completing traditional university-based programs. The author examined the achievements of students in a preparation program for teachers of children with visual impairments in…

At the time of the development of the new curriculum in Slovenia, international comparative data providing information on the performance of Slovene students as compared to other relevant countries were available from a limited number of assessments. For this reason, it was even more important that additional international comparisons were…

The success of Project Launch, a teacher induction program sponsored by a regional teacher center and a consortium of universities, is compared for rural and non-rural participants. Indicators of success include teacher accomplishment of action plan goals, teacher self and mentor assessment of teaching strengths related to action plan goals,…

To explore the impact of the communication medium on building common ground, this article presents research comparing learner use of reception strategies in traditional face-to-face (FTF) and in synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). Reception strategies, such as reprises, hypothesis testing and forward inferencing provide evidence of…

The primary purpose of this study was to use an established behavioural taxonomy (Ames, 1992b) as a computer-based observational coding system to assess the teaching behaviours that influence perceptions of the motivational climate in Physical Education (PE). The secondary purpose was to determine the degree of congruence between the behavioural…

The results of previous educational research raise some questions about the efficacy of conventional teaching strategies and point to a need for using teaching strategies that explicitly take into account misconceptions students bring to the classes or acquire during the teaching-learning process. Accordingly, this article presents efforts to…

Background: School physical education is available to most young people and provides a structured context for physical activity participation. Regular physical activity during childhood can confer acute and long-term health benefits. From this health perspective one of the goals of physical education is for students to take part in appropriate…

Background/context: Professional development is an important element of professional practice and teachers are expected to engage in activities that not only improve practice but also have a positive impact on pupil learning. Physical educators worldwide have acknowledged the need to improve the continuing education of teachers and have called…

This paper examines three concepts relating to the role of heads of department (HoDs) in secondary schools: boundary management; the roles of subject leadership and departmental functioning as HoD activities; and the place of HoDs in evolving school hierarchies. To throw light on the last an empirical study is reported that explores hierarchies in…