Working memory plays a key role in supporting children's learning over the school years, and beyond this into adulthood. It is proposed here that working memory is crucially required to store information while other material is being mentally manipulated during the classroom learning activities that form the foundations for the acquisition of…

This qualitative study explored parents' perceptions of how their homelessness affected the development and academic achievement of their children. Grounded theory with symbolic interactionism was the framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 34 homeless families in a variety of settings. Multiple factors…

As policymakers and education leaders around the country make plans to meet the ambitious goals in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, they would be well advised to take a close look at the distribution of teacher talent. In fact, the act requires exactly that. State and local education leaders must now publicly report data on the number of poor…

Community service learning offers students the opportunity to cross socially constructed and epistemological borders of power and privilege, allowing them to come into contact with groups of people who are different from themselves and to learn in different ways. Peer facilitators, undergraduate student instructional leaders who guide others…

Children's lead and pesticide exposures are used as examples to examine social disparities in exposure reduction efforts as well as environmental policies impacting children in poverty and minority children. The review also presents an estimate of the effect of social disparities in lead exposure on standardized test performance. Because including…

This article describes the consequences of dental disease among children under age 3. "Early childhood carries" (ECC) is preventable but is still a major public health problem--especially in poor and medically underserved communities--due to lack of awareness about prevention. The authors explain that in transdisciplinary care, practitioners work…

The aim of this study was to assess how the introduction of new service policies in the United Kingdom--such as person-centered planning and the active development of support networks--was impacting the lives of carers of people with intellectual disability from South Asian backgrounds. Using a semistructured interview schedule, 19 families of…

The authors introduce readers to the research documenting racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness. They describe the key tests, including the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), and several intelligence tests, and describe how they have been administered to several important national samples of…

The authors examine black, white, and Hispanic children's differing experiences in early childhood care and education and explore links between these experiences and racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness. Children who attend center care or preschool programs enter school more ready to learn, but both the share of children enrolled in these…

There are more than 700 million current Internet users, but the world population is approximately 6 billion (Trend 2001), indicating that computer technology is used by less than one-eighth of the population. Computers are becoming common tools in schools, often viewed as a democratic panacea despite the costs involved and despite the fact that…

Despite the fact that current reforms in education have placed significant emphases on the integration of computer-based technology in the curriculum and the use of it to improve teaching and learning, researchers reveal that effective technology pedagogy that assists to increase student achievement is not always used in urban and high poverty…

Two seminal reports on the state of education advantage and disadvantage in so called "rich nations" were released in 2002 by the international agencies OECD (2002a) and UNICEF (2002). These complex reports are brought to the attention of those at the very centre of the education debate, the general public, through the public media. What…

No other information and communication technology has swept the globe with greater speed than the Internet, having the potential to promote vast social, economic, and political transformations. As new technologies become available the pattern of adoption and diffusion creates disparities in access and ownership. At the most basic this gap is…

In contrast to the many studies that have examined parenting in low-income families from a deficit perspective, this study examines their strengths by proposing and testing a model of parenting goals derived from social and developmental theories on goal-orientation, motivation, attachment, and child socialization. The model posits two categories…

Background: The aim of the present study was to identify factors associated with the level of psychological distress reported by family carers of children with intellectual disability living in a large urban conurbation. Method: Information was collected by postal questionnaire (or interview for family carers who did not have English as their…