Over a school year, researchers had first graders talk and write about paintings, picture books, and films while participating in a program that introduced them to visual literacy. Researchers found that, over the school year, children's choices of pictures and volume of language changed and that urban and suburban children differed. (SM)

Urban elementary school teachers completed a checklist designed to determine a profile of the most significant factors that caused students to be at risk. Results indicated there were eight important factors: academic risk, behavior and coping skills, social withdrawal, family income, parenting, language development, retention, and attendance. (SM)

Describes the discourse of three ninth-grade coauthoring trials (model, typical, and problem groups), discussing factors in their interactions that affected the success of collaborative writing. Three factors characterized the model group (kinds of social interactions, level of cognitive conflict, and amount and kinds of engagement during the…

Using 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study data, researchers examined why Asian American students generally have higher academic achievement than other minorities. Asian Americans were more likely to live in intact homes, spend more time doing homework, and attend more lessons and activities outside of regular school. Asian American parents…

A functional analysis involving interviews and direct observation was used to analyze the multiple disruptive behaviors of a kindergarten student. An intervention that combined reinforcement and teacher-cued self-monitoring procedures was implemented using an A-B-A-B withdrawal design. The procedures produced a significant decrease in the…

Study explored how analog type and format and learner's prior knowledge would affect transfer outside of an experimental setting, examining the relationship between the analog's contextual elements and high school freshmen's performance on a science problem. Some students spontaneously applied structural elements on the analog to the solution. (SM)

Teachers can have a moral impact on students in multiple and subtle ways. Several layers of moral meaning embedded in classroom teaching and the teacher's role are analyzed, regarding "moral" in the sense of mores (customary actions) and moral values. (SLD)

Ethnographic methods and conversation analysis were used to examine five teacher-supervisor conferences and their contexts. Passive, collaborative, and adversarial teacher conference roles were constructed in the conference process. Implications for supervision, educational leadership and reform, and teacher recruitment and placement are…

Three fundamentally different uses are described for classroom cases: (1) as instructional tools to help novice teachers connect theory and practice and develop problem-solving skills; (2) as raw data for research on teacher cognition; and (3) as catalysts to promote change in teachers' beliefs and practices. (SLD)

Responses of two high school history teachers on three performance assessments of teaching, part of the Stanford University Teacher Assessment Project, were analyzed. Differences that emerged in teacher attitudes and knowledge level illustrate what performance assessment can reveal about pedagogical knowledge and the implications for educational…

The ideological positions that developed in a teacher research group were analyzed. The conflicts and interchanges among participants revealed important divisions within the teacher research movement that generate needed discussions of pedagogical practice. (SLD)

Development of a student learning model, based on the analysis of 14 students' classroom experiences in 3 elementary and middle school studies, is described. Data analysis rules derived from the model predicted learning with 80-85% success across the studies. (SLD)

Data from the normative archives of the Self-Description Questionnaire for 8 random samples of 500 students support the gender-invariant model of relations between math, verbal, academic, and general self-concepts. The data also provide good support for the comparison of mean scores over gender and age. (SLD)

Results from a study involving 32 learning-disabled, 17 gifted, and 14 normally achieving students from grades 4 and 5 support the idea that learning-disabled children's problem-solving performance reflects a weak integration of metacognitive skills with online processing and problem solution. (SLD)

The appropriateness of the metaphor of the purity of data is questioned, using a perspective based on L. S. Vygotsky's idea of the zone of proximal development and its emphasis on a genetic method in which development is mediated by cultural tools and signs. (SLD)