Discusses Hugh Mehan's "Learning Lessons" in the development of the naturalistic study of classroom discourse studies and considers the emergence of an alternative program for classroom discourse studies in critical discourse analysis. Critiques some studies of classroom discourse and analyzes a fourth-grade lesson on fractions to show how the…

Engaged a class of 23 diverse fifth graders in historical investigation of U.S. colonial history to help their thinking skills and understanding of the past. Focused on a teaching dilemma provoked by history's interpretive paradox and showed how the teacher/researchers found his pedagogical thinking changed by that encounter. (SLD)

Studied how literacy and identity interacted in the development of approximately 85 Latino/a students in 4 intermediate-grade bilingual classrooms. Findings show that students' bilingual language and literacy knowledge and their understanding of identity have noticeable influences on each other. Identified some ways in which language and literacy…

Examined the world views of children after they had experienced a natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, in Florida in 1992. Responses of 127 fourth and fifth graders indicated differences and similarities in the children's world views by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. Discusses implications for promoting science literacy for all…

Whether boys and girls shared equally in performing behaviors required in hands-on activities in the performance-based science classroom was studied over the school year with 165 students in grades five through eight. Being actively involved predicted students' year-end science attitudes, and boys tended to handle the resources more often. (SLD)

Two studies of 84 fourth graders investigated how goals and self-evaluation affect motivation and achievement outcomes. Students studied fractions under either "learning" or "performance" goals; motivation and achievement outcomes were measured. Learning goals and self-evaluation improve achievement outcomes. (MAK)

Surveyed 656 fifth graders on their use of self-handicapping strategies and examined predictors of self-handicapping. Boys used handicapping more than girls did, and grade point average and perceived academic competence were negatively related to handicapping. Ability goal structure and teaching practices highlighting relative ability were…

Studied relations between parenting and school performance of fourth and fifth graders in 75 Asian-American, 109 Latino, and 91 European-American families. Ethnic differences emerged in parents' expectations for education attainment and grades, childrearing beliefs, perceptions of parental efficacy, and in relations between these beliefs and…

Analyses of data for three cohorts of middle-school students (more than 5,600) show that communal organization was not related to mathematics achievement or attendance, but academic press was positively related to both mathematics achievement and attendance. Results call for more skepticism about the currently popular communitarian approach to…

The effects of a task-focused goals (TFG) treatment in mathematics were studied with low-achieving students with or without learning disabilities. Results with 40 elementary classrooms showed that TFG students enjoyed the approach, but that increased effort was associated with greater learning only for those without learning disabilities. (SLD)

Artificial cumulative folders were constructed for eight fourth grade boys and examined by teachers. Each folder contained varied information on previous misbehavior, race, and parents' educational attainment. Results showed that teachers were most influenced by comments concerning behavior when judging whether the student needed special…

Experimental fourth grade teachers were instructed about characteristics of effective mathematics teachers. Using a standardized mathematics achievement test as the dependent variable, the model proved effective. The interactions between student aptitudes, teacher style, and instructional model helped to interpret the influences on student…

Providing contextual aids to help students reduce mutual interference between two sentences was studied. When students were presented sentences in distinctive contexts, no interference was observed. An interference effect was obtained when sentences were given in either no context or a nondistinctive context. (MH)

The degree to which cognitive mediation interacts with vocabulary ability to influence the recall of different verbal units was investigated with a sample of 64 elementary school children. Results are interpreted with respect to the influence of vocabulary ability on school learning. (Author/JKS)

Children listened to sentences under two instructional sets (imagery or repetition) and answered multiple choice alternatives--either identical or similar in meaning to correct information in the sentences; and including or not including previously presented irrelevant information. The sources of interference predicted from recognition memory…