This article offers a multidimensional framework that broadens current approaches to "best practices" inquiry to include (1) the perspectives of both the consumers of services and professional practitioners and (2) a value-based critique. The predominant empirical approach to best practices inquiry is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of…

"Children and Youth at Risk in Urban Education" (CAYAR), a network of the European Educational Research Association, has brought together pioneering researchers to address school exclusion, truancy, dropout and disaffection. Four books have been produced by the network since 1997: "Children and Youth at Risk and Urban…

The typical approach to creating an examination disk for exercises and projects in a course on computer forensics is for the instructor to populate a piece of media with evidence to be retrieved. While such an approach supports the simple use of forensic tools, in many cases the use of an instructor-developed examination disk avoids utilizing some…

The "Mozart effect" refers to an increase in spatial reasoning performance following exposure to music composed by Mozart. Empirical tests of the effect have resulted in an inconsistent pattern of findings with some studies producing the effect and others failing to do so. The majority of the investigations have relied on paper-and-pencil tests.…

The research purposes were to examine the factorial and convergent validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of the Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS). Two separate studies, containing a total of 1,263 college students, were undertaken to accomplish these purposes. Participants completed the EDS and measures of exercise behavior and…

Background: Literacy difficulties show high levels of comorbidity with both disruptive and emotional disorders, but questions remain over the nature and specificity of these links. Method: Relationships between specific literacy difficulties and psychiatric disorder were investigated in a large-scale national sample of children aged 9 to 15 years.…

Background: The need to address acquired cognitive impairments is increasing in child populations seen across a range of settings. However, current clinical practice following brain injury in children does not necessarily incorporate the use of cognitive rehabilitation models or techniques. The aim of this paper is to review the literature in this…

Background: Individuals with autism exhibit impairments in face recognition, and neuroimaging studies have shown that individuals with autism exhibit abnormal patterns of brain activity during face processing. The current study examined the temporal characteristics of face processing in autism and their relation to behavior. Method: High-density…

A conceptual argument is presented for the relevance of behavior-analytic research on impulsive choice to issues of occupational safety and health. Impulsive choice is defined in terms of discounting, which is the tendency for the value of a commodity to decrease as a function of various parameters (e.g., having to wait or expend energy to receive…

Demonstrating the contribution of leadership development programs to student learning has become a problem of considerable recent interest to both school reformers and those attempting to improve how school leaders are prepared. This article describes an innovative approach to improving school leadership developed by the Greater New Orleans School…

This paper is an analysis of published research on computer-assisted instruction (CAI) for mathematics involving students with learning disabilities. A systematic search of the literature on computer-assisted instructional interventions for students with learning disabilities yielded 25 studies that met the criteria for inclusion in this analysis.…

To complement traditional learning activities in a masters-level research methodology course, social work students worked on a formal research project which involved: designing the study, constructing measures, selecting a sampling strategy, collecting data, reducing and analyzing data, and finally interpreting and communicating the results. The…

The "Evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Study Reports" describes the special studies that comprised the design of the evaluation. In the Final Report, the authors presented a practical discussion of the evaluation studies to its primary, intended audience, namely policymakers. On this accompanying CD, readers…

Using the data from Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, this issue of "Data Notes" is the second of a two-part series investigating the characteristics of late stop-outs--students who accumulate at least 30 credits within the first two years, only to stop out without completing credentials or transferring. The data show that male…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to Montclair State University (MSU) on September 25-26, 2008 to conduct interviews with individuals who play important roles in the university's teacher preparation program. These interviews, along with additional documentation provided by MSU and identified by the AED research…