This paper is intended for researchers considering using ethnography as a methodology to investigate home literacy experiences of children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). After briefly setting ethnographic study in the context of English language learners' home literacy practices, I identify five opportunities and five potential…

Over the last three decades, many studies have been conducted to identify students' preconceptions on various science topics. It is time now for a synthetic study of preconceptions to enhance our understanding of students' everyday cognition and to benefit our effort in developing effective instructional inventions for conceptual change. Through a…

The issue of the "research-practice gap"--the problematic relationship between research in education and educational practice--has been widely reported in the literature. This critical literature review explores some of the causes and features of the gap and suggests some possible approaches for addressing it. These solutions involve changes in…

Research has shown a relationship between mothers' beliefs about literacy, their educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, and their children's emergent literacy awareness. Many Australian Indigenous children experience educational disadvantage, as do children whose parents are manual workers. One recommendation that is frequently made is for…

This article explores the history of North American educational research in an attempt to offer readers a historically informed view of the field as a whole. The first part of the article situates many of the major research programs in their original social settings, showing how they emerged in response to various administrative and academic…

Responses to a 45-item questionnaire on job satisfaction administered to 410 principals in Alberta, Canada, found that contributing factors were responsibility and autonomy, principal-teacher work involvement, liaison at the district level, status recognition and task demands. Resource adequacy, salary and benefits, and rapport with students were…

Analysis of achievement test scores of 439 tenth-grade students found the hypothesized variables of IQ, socioeconomic status (SES), self-rated motivation, peer-rated studiousness, peer-group status, and parent-rated home environment contributed uniquely to achievement variance; SES, sex, and language medium of instruction were superfluous in the…

The attempt to integrate school curricula with social concerns is a recurring motif in North American education. Impediments to integration can be reduced by incorporating a cognitive approach to social issues analysis. The approach was tested with 4seven9 grade 7-10 students in two Ontario, Canada, school systems with positive results. (MM)

Four experimental reading-treatment classes (n=94) and four control classes (n=100) wrote pre- and post-compositions which were evaluated for overall quality, syntactic density, T-unit length, productivity, and selected grammatical errors. Analysis of results found significant differences in reading skills but no differences in writing skills. The…

To assess Feuerstein's Learning Potential Assessment Device's (LPAD) ability to identify deficient cognitive functions, Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices were administered to 176 elementary/junior high students--25 percent were rescored--and 12 complete LPAD reports from a university educational clinic were reanalyzed. Correlations were…

Few significant differences in the beliefs of first-year education students (n=48), first-year arts students (n=36), and first-year science students (n=37) toward education, teaching, and students were found on an attitude scale constructed by interviewing 10 freshman education students. Education students tended to enter their program with…

Pretend play training was given to an experimental group of 15 children aged three to five years. A matched control group was given mastery tasks. Results showed the experimental group gained significantly on observed make-believe play, non-standard alternative uses, Say-and-Tell total, Self-Concept Empathy Preschool Embedded Figures, and Matching…

Cognitive, behavior, achievement, and English/French speaking skills were correlated with ratings of oral French ability for third-grade francophone and anglophone immersion students. Teacher ratings correlated with achievement and cooperativeness, but independent ratings didn't. Objective evaluation procedures should be developed to minimize the…

Because diagnostic capability of the WISC-R has remained in doubt, its diagnostic suitability was assessed by applying Kelley's method of estimating the proportion of score differences in excess of chance to the original subscales, Bannatyne clusters, and Kaufman's three factor groupings. Caution should be used when applying WISC-R diagnostically.…

Reports that no significant difference in reliability appeared between a heterogeneous and a homogeneous form of the same general science matching-item test administered to 316 sixth-grade students but that scores on the heterogeneous form of the test were higher, independent of the examinee's sex or intelligence. (SB)