According to this author, professional development in most school districts usually is not what teachers call worthwhile. Most is mandatory and tied to the latest literacy "fix," new district systems, text adoptions and occasionally, a speaker who has something new to share. She contends that meaningful professional development should be an…

Injection drug users (IDUs) are at risk for HIV and viral hepatitis, and risky injection behavior persists despite decades of intervention. Cognitive behavioral theories (CBTs) are commonly used to help understand risky injection behavior. The authors review findings from CBT-based studies of injection risk behavior among IDUs. An extensive…

Corpora have been used for pedagogical purposes for more than two decades but empirical studies are relatively rare, particularly in the context of grammar teaching. The present study focuses on students' attitudes towards grammar and how these attitudes are affected by the introduction of concordancing. The principal aims of the project were to…

In this article, we make the case that HIV/AIDS clubs in Ugandan schools provide valuable information to students who may not have easy access to health services. As one club motto suggests, the clubs "talk what others think you can't talk". The innovative peer education methods, which include drama, popular culture and community…

To date, reports of reading interventions for students at risk for emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) that have been published in refereed journals have involved sustained support by university or school-site personnel. This study examined the efficacy and feasibility of a reading intervention that 2 general education teachers implemented in…

Home-based peer tutoring was used to teach math skills to 4 girls with deficits in mathematics and histories of abuse or neglect. Girls living in the same home formed tutoring dyads, and each participant served as both the peer tutor and the tutee during the course of the study. At the initiation of the tutoring intervention, an expert tutor…

In this article, the author features "Primary ConneXions", an outreach project of Queen's University Belfast that is funded and supported by "Queen's in the Community". The format of "Primary ConneXions" is a primary school version of a real science research conference. Children do "PowerPoint"…

Three hundred and forty-six secondary students (127 special education and 219 general education) were surveyed about their perceptions of co-teaching. While significant differences were discovered between groups, all students responded favorably to co-teaching: they indicated they were getting better grades and developing better literacy skills,…

This article is about a training project run by Central England People First (CEPF). CEPF has been doing workshops, conferences and other training for over 10 years. It seemed like a good idea to help other people with learning difficulties to learn how to be trainers. This would help them to speak out about their lives and the services they want.…

This position statement was inspired by the "Position Statement on Graduate Students in Writing Center Administration" (endorsed by the International Writing Center Association on November 17, 2001). A purpose of the document, to borrow language from the graduate student position statement, is to "[suggest] an ideal set of conditions," and it is…

A study examined the extent of peer tutors' awareness of reading comprehension problems as a source of academic difficulties. The study, conducted in the spring of 1996, used a questionnaire to determine some of the reading habits of peer tutors and their perceptions of reading comprehension difficulties among students they tutored. The…

A study investigated whether grade-level status affects learning through cross-age activities. Data were collected through unstructured and open-ended audiotaped interviews with 11 pairs of students in a combined third- and fifth-grade class. Coding and analysis of data revealed seven themes related to students' perceptions of their interactions…

Learning theorist Kenneth Bruffee traces the roots of collaborative learning in American college classrooms back to the early 1970s when changing educational needs necessitated adapting conventional college classroom practices to the needs of new students. Traditional pedagogy had failed because of the growth in the number of nontraditional…

The cognitive nature, power, and educational value of college women's friendships were studied. As a means for dissolving the boundaries between the academic and intellectual, and as a place where autonomy and interdependence are in dynamic exercise, female friendships can provide a model for peer-assisted learning in higher education. Data were…

Describes a peer method of teaching writing at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. (RB)