This qualitative study examines the perspectives of special education/resource teachers in Winnipeg on current transition services to prepare high school students with disabilities for adulthood. The data were collected by individual in-depth interviews with 6 teachers responsible for coordinating transition services. The main themes emerging from…

A battery of reading-related and reading measures was used to select samples of good (N = 30) and poor readers (N = 19) in Grade 1. Parents of these children completed a questionnaire about current and preschool home literacy practices and socio-economic status (SES). The 2 groups were compared with t tests and in a discriminant analysis. The t…

This research replicates the study conducted by Forlin (2001) in Churchlands, Western Australia. Forlin's Inclusive Education Teacher Stress and Coping Questionnaire was adapted from the original questionnaire to more accurately reflect the language and practice of inclusion in Ontario (Frost & Brackenreed, 2004). The purpose of this study was to…

In the inclusive/special education literature, practitioners often claim that using portfolios is excessively time-intensive, while other researchers lay claim to positive possibilities for students with disabilities/exceptionalities, such as increased self-esteem, internal locus of control, choice-making, and active participation in learning. To…

Self-reports from siblings of children with special needs regarding their appraisal of family stress and coping are important additions to the disability literature. Twelve school-age siblings of children with special needs were interviewed about their daily hassles, uplifts, and coping strategies related to living in a family with a child with a…

The study investigated the mental models of primary school children related to the day/night cycle. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with 40 fourth-grade and 40 sixth-grade children. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the children were classified as having geocentric models. The results also…

The tendency for the press and public to over-react on safety. The need to balance risk against benefit. The difference between hazard and risk. Preventative or protective steps (control measures) to reduce the risk from particular hazards. Examples in school science, including the use of eye protection and alternative strategies, if eye…

Knowledge about ecology and environmental education (EE) constitutes a basic tool for promoting a sustainable future, and was a target area of the BIOHEAD-Citizen Project. School textbooks were considered as representative sources of evidence in terms of ecology and environmental education, and were used for comparison among the countries…

Classically, health education has provided mainly factual knowledge about diseases and their prevention. This educational approach is within the so called Biomedical Model (BM). It is based on pathologic (Pa), curative (Cu) and preventive (Pr) conceptions of health. In contrast, the Health Promotion (HP) approach of health education intends to…

What kinds of images of human beings illustrate human evolution in school textbooks? A comparison between the textbooks of eighteen different countries (twelve European countries and six non-European countries) was attempted. In six countries (Algeria, Malta, Morocco, Mozambique, Portugal, and Tunisia), we did not find any chapter on the topic of…

Genetic concepts have significantly evolved over the last ten years, and are now less connected to innate ideas and reductionism. Unique reference to genetic determinism has been replaced by the interaction between the genes and their environment (epigenetics). Our analyses relate to how current school biology textbooks present this new paradigm…

Our study focused on two topics, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and their control using condoms. For this, we analysed and compared 42 school textbooks from 16 countries on the general topic "Human Reproduction and Sex Education" using a specific grid designed by the BIOHEAD-Citizen project. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was a…

The present study relates to a research line in didactics of science that focuses on the function that sign systems or semiotic modes have in communicative interactions in science classrooms. The study was conducted by 20 secondary and university science teachers who belong to the same research group LIEC ("Language and Science Teaching") at the…

Despite being a landmark of 20th century biology, the "classical molecular gene concept," according to which a gene is a stretch of DNA encoding a functional product, which may be a single polypeptide or RNA molecule, has been recently challenged by a series of findings (e.g., split genes, alternative splicing, overlapping and nested genes, mRNA…

The post-apartheid National Physical Science Curriculum was implemented for the first time in South Africa in grade 10 during 2006. A variety of new textbooks for grade 10 have been published. This study was a comparative analysis of three popular textbooks, one prepared to support the previous curriculum, and two prepared for the new curriculum.…