Interviews with 12 teacher educators at a Canadian university explored the characteristics and roles of educational leaders in general and what constituted educational leadership at the school level. These faculty generally held traditional views of educational leadership. Implications for teacher education and faculty development are discussed.…

Observation data from 19 self-contained sixth-grade Canadian classrooms were analyzed to describe research process instruction. Most teachers used traditional approaches to research tasks. Findings suggest that students acquire topic-driven conceptions of the research process, encounter limited points of view about their research topic, and lack…

In Manitoba, the Literacy Groups Project provides evidence that struggling second-graders can attain average grade-cohort reading levels through a small-group pull-out program if certain criteria are met: assigning students to groups according to a narrow range of reading levels, and finding materials to support teacher efforts in the small-group…

Examines reliability issues in the large-scale assessment of speech communication through authentic techniques, used recently in Saskatchewan. Performance-based approaches enable educators to evaluate the integrated, interpersonal communication skills of large student populations, thereby modeling best professional practice. However, decentralized…

A qualitative research methods course, offered for faculty at an Israeli school of education, was a significant "cultural event" promoting inclusion of qualitative methods in a strongly positivist setting. A profound change in faculty attitudes was eased by administrative support and by participants' ability to find entry points to ideas through…

An ongoing study has found that the "basics" in contemporary educational theory are actually the smallest, most easily isolated and most easily testable fragments of knowledge in a discipline--abstractions produced by complex analysis. The project is exploring an alternative version of "basicness" in which the complex, often ambiguous realm of a…

A survey of 368 immigrant Chinese high school students in Toronto found that English language use was positively related to father's education, prior experience in Canada, and cultural and personal reasons for emigration, and negatively related to residence in the downtown Toronto area and age at emigration. (Contains 26 references.) (SV)

The eight chapters of this theme issue report on analyses of civics education in 17 secondary schools in 6 countries. The analyses focused on national policies on civic education, the impact of these policies on the school curriculum, and the implementation of these policies in school practices. Overall, studies suggest that schools are…

Used a model of educational productivity to analyze data on South Korean and U.S. achievement and its possible causes. Chapters 1 through 5 present the study, which examined the achievement of 10,975 U.S. middle school students and 5,846 South Korean students. Chapters 6 and 7, by Yunhan Hwang and Ward Weldon, present South Korean and U.S.…

Explores the constructs of "coming to know" (conceptual change) and "coming to believe" (persuasion) by identifying theoretical forbears of conceptual change and persuasion theory in the domains of philosophy and psychology with the intent of tracing their influence on educational research and practice. (Author/SLD)

Studied how and why persuasion occurs, examining the processing of two articles using topic-specific measures of belief. Results from 37 undergraduates, 25 graduate students, and 20 faculty members show that readers' perceptions of their knowledge play a more significant role in persuasion outcomes than the knowledge actually demonstrated. (SLD)

Compared the perceptions of persuasiveness of text of undergraduate students (n=195) to those of text-based persuasion and conceptual change experts (n=7). Findings show overlap between the students' and experts' conceptions of persuasion and also show the importance of type and form of supporting evidence and the affective nature of the text.…

Considers the persuasive qualities of refutational text and explores the role of refutational text in educational settings that have competing agendas. Discusses how the use of refutation to aid learning fits into one of these agendas, and the teaching of refutation as a persuasive rhetorical device fits another. (SLD)

Describes key issues pertaining to research on persuasion and conceptual change, exploring: (1) the legitimacy and aims of persuasive discourse in educational contexts; (2) the interplay of message and person characteristics; and (3) the integration of research methods to investigate change through persuasion. (SLD)

Chapters of this special issue identify three characteristics of persuasive text that can be useful in inviting conceptual change. These are: (1) the comprehensibility, clarity, and credibility of the text; (2) the importance of explicitly addressing the readers' prior beliefs; and (3) affective and motivational factors. (SLD)