Explores students' reasons for choosing the General National Vocational Qualifications Advanced Business course in an attempt to understand reasons for non-completion of the course. Focuses on the influence of competition of the post-16 curriculum, the effect of advice on student choice, and the students' perceptions of themselves as learners and…

Studied the correlates of intellectual giftedness and gender differences in giftedness in 6 groups of 10th graders (n=12,630). Discusses implications for U.S. youth achievement levels, manpower planning, and possible educational interventions. (SLD)

A study involving 33 teachers and 732 college students with deafness found a moderate relation between students' perceptions of communication ease and teaching effectiveness and a weak relation of these two variables to the teachers' assessed level of sign skill. Students could clearly differentiate three levels of teacher sign skill. (Contains…

Draws together the results of seven studies that investigated factors influencing the effects of service quality in community-based residential services for people with severe mental retardation. Results found that quality of staff and resident activity is dependent on an interaction between the structure, orientation, and procedures followed…

Reviews recent long-term outcome studies concerning the psycho-educational functioning of children who were born with very low birth weight (2.20 to 3.31 pounds). Findings indicate that these children develop without problems in some, but not all, areas. The areas most consistently affected were neuro-motor and mathematics. (Author/CR)

A survey of the broad policy community rates the governor, Democratic and Republican lawmakers, mayor, Chicago Board of Education, district central office, and the Chicago Teachers union in their work of Chicago school governance before and after the July 1995 restructuring. Preliminary results suggest improvement in school governance following…

The achievement goals of 127 sets of parents and perfectionism in their academically talented children (56% boys) were studied. Children of performance goal, rather than learning goal, parents were more likely to exhibit dysfunctional perfectionism, with a combination of concern about mistakes and doubts about actions, parental expectations, and…

Three studies examined the effects of different interventions used with elementary students with learning disabilities and typical students on spelling and math homework completion and weekly quiz performance. Three intervention strategies resulted in significant increases in homework completion: giving students real-life assignments, using…

Wraparound team members (n=20) identified as teaming experts rated 109 items that support team effectiveness across six categories: team goals, member roles and membership, communication, cohesion, logistics, and outcomes. Items in the team outcomes, goals, and cohesion categories were ranked most critical to team effectiveness. (Contains…

Four conditions of a standard false belief task were administered to 10 children with specific language impairment (SLI), 10 children of the same age, and 9 younger children with comparable language skills. Results found that linguistic competence served as a limiting factor in false belief performance in children with SLI. (Contains references.)…

A study investigated the psychometric validity of current language impairment, communication activity limitation, and quality of life measures for differentiating 18 typical adults from 18 adults with chronic aphasia. Results indicated there existed significant relationships among some demographic variables and performance on the measures,…

A study of 60 successful males and females with reading disabilities found both genders developed high level literacy skills through avid reading of high interest texts, females were more likely to be discouraged from pursuing academic interests, and both genders were discouraged from pursuing mathematics and science. (Contains references.)…

A review of 913 studies involving students with learning disabilities found treatment outcomes were significantly affected by the following violations: teacher effects, establishing criterion levels of instructional performance, reliance on experimental measures, using different pretest and posttest measures, using a sample heterogeneous in age,…

Two experiments used Visual Expectations Procedure to investigate development of expectations in infants up to 12 months old. Reaction time improved and the percentage of anticipations increased between 6 and 9 months using an alternation pattern or a complex pivot pattern, and between 4 and 8 months when using a left-right alternation or a…

Three experiments investigated 4-, 6-, and 8-month-olds' perception of the audible, visible, and combined attributes of bimodally specified syllables. Results suggested that at 4 months, infants attended primarily to the featural information, at 6 months primarily to the asynchrony, and at 8 months to both features independently. (Author/KB)