Analyzes interviews with primary school practitioners about the implementation of the English/Welsh National Curriculum. Finds long-term trends are influenced by a conflict between shortage of time and demands of good practices. Discusses changes from child-focused to standard curriculum, from local to standard assessment, and similar issues. (CFR)

Reports on a study of the impact of nursery school/preschool education on primary school readiness and achievement of 1,800 English and Welsh children. Finds significant positive effects in reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Discusses the effects of nursery school versus playgroup experience and the role of socioeconomic status. (CFR)

Maintains that alternative assessment puts a student in the role of a teacher preparing for a lesson. Asserts that students need different types of resources to foster student curiosity, provide direction, and support exploration. Provides a nine-item annotated bibliography of books, book series, and graphic collections. (CFR)

Maintains that historians, education professors, and education critics have called for a return to a history-centered social studies curriculum. Asserts that the use of biographies and autobiographies will reinvigorate the atmosphere of the history classroom. Includes a 22-item nonannotated bibliography of teacher resources on the topic. (CFR)

Maintains that fiction written for children and young adults can build interest and enhance understanding of the World War II era. Discusses and recommends five Holocaust-related fictional books. Includes an unannotated bibliography of 61 books on the subject categorized by topic and grade level. (CFR)

Describes a project-based distance learning course design in an open university course. Discusses approaches to course design in distance learning and suggests that students are not as easily manipulated by instructional devices as course designers may think. (CFR)

Reports on a case study of formative evaluation of the materials and procedures used in a distance-learning French-language course. Identifies and evaluates key teaching design features of the draft audiovisual and print packages. Discusses teaching design in relation to revisions made to the course materials. (CFR)

Addresses one of three major challenges facing distance education--its claimed overreliance on behaviorist approaches to teaching and learning. Maintains that distance learning encourages students to review their own learning approaches and to be more proactive about their study methods. (CFR)

Maintains that open and distance education represents contemporary education forms that respond to the shift to late-modernity, especially in educational technology and student-teacher relationships. Drawing on the work of Anthony Giddens, uncovers relationships among distance education, late-modernity, and the self. (CFR)

Reports on a study of 36 mothers and children to determine the role played by preschool children's intellectual and behavioral characteristics on their parents' expectations for school performance. Finds that children whose parents had lower expectations came from lower social classes and tended to be boys. (CFR)

Maintains that educational integration assumes that heterogeneous grouping will increase the extent to which the learning disabled are accepted by peers. Reports on a study of 128 adolescents in integrated and nonintegrated schools. Finds that the frequency of contacts, not the type of school attended, led to more positive expectations. (CFR)

Reports on a study of students' perceptions of classroom environment and learning styles among 1,733 Singapore 10th-graders. Finds that school type had the most influence on the students' perceptions of both actual and preferred classroom environment. Also finds gender had lesser influence and learning styles had the least influence. (CFR)

Traces the history of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) from the 1987 Vassar Conference to the publication, "Guidelines for the Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange." Explains the types of questions raised and attempts made to answer them. Discusses the organization of TEI committees and the project's future. (CFR)

Uses military archives from the postwar era to illustrate that U.S. educational policy in Germany was not restricted to the school system. Asserts that it was part of an extensive plan to create new patterns of action, qualifications, and new institutions for both students and teachers. (CFR)

Reports on a survey of 1,077 German students and 233 teachers about different forms of student violence. Finds that the perpetrators were nearly all male, while victims were both male and female. Observes that, in comparison with previous studies, the rate of school violence does not appear to be on the increase. (CFR)