Sources of organizational learning were studied for 131 employees, 109 of whom were managers, who participated in projects with external consultants in a large public-transport company in Norway. A multiple regression analysis explained 69% of organizational learning as a function of attitude toward learning. Differences between managers and other…

The numbers of students who teased and students who were teased and their characteristics were studied in two longitudinal studies in Finland involving 100 elementary school students and 119 secondary school students. Teasing was very common and students but not teachers, were aware of who was being teased and who did it. Influencing teasing in…

The seven chapters of this theme issue focus on efforts in four countries to understand and improve the experiences of students traditionally defined as having disabilities or special needs. The chapters include a discussion of the language of special education reform and accounts of inclusion-related issues in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the…

The 11 chapters of this theme issue explore important issues that relate cognitive style to educational concerns. They link cognitive style with reading comprehension, parental teaching, family qualities, teaching, distance learning, strategic learning, socialization, and athletic performance. (SLD)

Results of a questionnaire completed by 282 heads of Russian schools suggest that their problems in mastering foreign models of management stem from differences in the general logic of activity of Russian and Western educational managers, differences that are caused by differences in "external orders" toward schools. (SLD)

Analyzes didactics as the hard core of Finnish pedagogic discourse and relates changes in the state educational discourse in Finland to recent developments in department-level curricula in teacher education at Finnish universities in the 1980s and 1990s. The tendency in Finland has been toward a decontextualized and nonhistorical science of…

A majority of 1071 Norwegian eighth graders studied reported satisfactory support from teachers and relations with peers, although 12% reported more severe emotional complaints and 10% reported more severe musculoskeletal complaints. Exposure to harassment at school and a perceived lack of academic support show the strongest associations with…

Explores the meeting ground between Christian Socialist and Social Democratic ideas and practices in the development of adult education between 1900 and 1930 in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, focusing on cross-cultural dissemination and reception of Christian Socialism and the influence of the Woodbrooke Settlement in the United Kingdom and…

Explores the knowledge teachers will need to have in the future and considers the implications of new requirements for teaching and teacher education. Advances several propositions for changes in the perception of pedagogical knowledge, school curricula, and school structure and proposes a strategy of "core" and "periphery" aspects of…

Presents a conception of word recognition involving both phonological and orthographic processes. Discusses three explanations about the origin of orthographic processes in word recognition, and suggests that automatic orthographic word recognition is directly dependent on children's amount of reading practice in an out-of-school setting.…

Studied attributions for school-based loneliness for 36 Finnish students with a high degree of loneliness and 42 with a low degree of loneliness. More lonely students mostly used a nonself-serving internal-stable attributional style, while less lonely students attributed temporary loneliness to external, unstable, and controllable causes.…

Criticizes phenomenographic research in education for its failure to meet methodological requirements for the consistent study of life worlds and because the product of phenomenographic research, a structure of categories of description, may inhibit entry into the actual world of student experience. (SLD)

The six chapters of this theme issue focus on equivalence and comparability issues in international assessment, examining the impact of these issues on the validity of international assessments and the interpretation of results, including those of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. (SLD)

The five chapters of this theme issue examine trends and issues that will affect education in Asia over the next decade, focusing on (1) the continuing need for policy development; (2) changing educational management, especially with regard to decentralization; (3) educational finance; (4) equity issues; and (5) challenges of improving school…

Two chapters in this theme issue review the evidence in support of smaller class size. Two other chapters examine factors that enable a teacher to teach effectively in large classes. Three research studies present additional class-size data, including the fact that teachers do not appear to maximize the potential of smaller classes. (Author/SLD)