Third-grade students at Albion Public School (Albion, Nebraska) were linked with "special friends"--elderly residents at a local home. Students learned first-hand about the lives of the elderly, worked on related projects in school, shared activities with their new friends, and formed some very special relationships. (SV)

Each year, billions of US tax dollars are spent on basic discovery, intervention development, and efficacy research, while hundreds of billions of US tax dollars are also spent on health service delivery programs. However, little is spent on or known about how best to ensure that the lessons learned from science inform and improve the quality of…

This author prided herself as being one who embraced change, and often became disgusted with her fellow teachers when they dragged their feet and resisted district initiatives. She also believed in setting goals and then managing the tasks that allows one to reach the goals. She thought it was merely a matter of purposeful planning, effort, and…

This study compares perspectives about benefits and risks of inclusion of 237 parents of children with and without disabilities and 118 providers in the same community-based reverse inclusion preschool program, using the same measures. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a two factor structure, risks and benefits, based on scale scores from the…

Two studies explored children's understanding of how the presence of conflicting mental states in a single mind can lead people to act so as to subvert their own desires. Study 1 analyzed explanations by children (4-7 years) and adults of behaviors arising from this sort of "Ulysses conflict" and compared them with their understanding of…

Purpose: The persisting tension over the relative importance of theory and practice creates a crevasse between scholars and practitioners. The purpose here is to problematize divisions between cultural norms found among scholars and practitioners. Design/methodology/approach: Both authors, higher education scholars, experienced temporary…

For many novice teachers, the first solo effort in the classroom is a "sink or swim" experience. With good pre-service preparation that includes extensive field experience, the beginning teacher may feel more confident, but even those with the most confidence still find the complexities of decision-making bewildering. For those novices who are…

The authors present their journey through the development of an action research project based on collaboration between university health lecturers and a practice development and research nurse in an NHS Trust hospital. The project was designed to raise awareness and improve the practice of all staff in relation to the dignity and respect shown to…

Vitiligo is a chronic skin disease, which through change of appearance and body image, exerts a devastating effect on people, especially women. The objective of this study is to explore lived experience of women with Vitiligo by the hermeneutic phenomenology method. The purposive sample consisted of 16 Iranian women. Data analysis followed…

Strengths-based social work practice has become a major approach to working with clients. The social constructivist perspective is a foundation of this approach. Narrative treatment is one form of strengths-based practice arising from a social constructive perspective. The demands of time and material needing to be covered in the social work…

Facilitating mental computation discussion comes with its own set of challenges for researchers and teachers. It is important to be able to help capture the students' ideas, before they disappear and seem like little more than moments of magic! In enabling children to learn how numbers work, the current emphasis on mental computation is driven by…

Aggression in a proportion of people with intellectual disabilities is often assumed to be due to social-cognitive deficits. We reported on two studies in which we compared the emotion recognition and perspective-taking abilities of 43 frequently aggressive individuals and 46 nonaggressive peers. No difference was found between the groups' ability…

Inaccurate and incomplete presentations of American education history in teacher education programs play a central role in the poor preparation of pre-service teachers. This article exemplifies how the praxis of late 19th and 20th century African descent educators--who viewed education as a vehicle for freedom and an affirmation of…

Results compiled from several studies indicate that college students place significant personal emphasis on matters related to spirituality. Compiling students' responses from the author's 2003 pilot study, subsequent focus group interviews, and the 2004 national survey, along with faculty's responses from the 2004-2005 Higher Education Research…

Action research includes a variety of methods engaged in by practitioners who wish to learn more about their work and the possibility of constructively changing it. This paper describes an action research dissertation project that focused on the work of a group of community activists to construct new understandings of their work and, as a result,…