Identifies and discusses themes and resources related to American academic fiction, novels whose main characters are professors, college students, and those associated with academia, and includes bibliographies on American academic fiction. Sidebars present the best academic fiction for 1980-1994, online catalog search strategies to access…

This collection of diverse conference papers discusses work in the traditions of factor analysis, ordinal psychometrics, structural equations, and some special purpose models for the analysis of change. It is a useful source, but does little to link the psychometric framework to general developments in statistics and other disciplines. (SLD)

Analyzes the results of the first countrywide survey of the informal learning practices of adults in Canada, conducted in 1998. The survey found respondents to be devoting unprecedented amounts of time to learning activities, including an average of 15 hours per week in informal learning projects. Implications for policy and program initiatives…

Many teachers in Guatemala City had grown up under an oppressive government. They were educated in a culture of silence, in which it was dangerous to voice any ideas. Guatemalan educators are working to change the approach to education in their public schools, but in many ways it has not changed. Most teachers only know the methods by which they…

This study is based on a 1996 survey of PhD economists working in the academic and nonacademic sectors since 1989. Despite a raw gender difference in all types of research output, the male dummy variable proves statistically significant in predicting only one publication measure. In a full sample and faculty subsample, number of years since…

The debate about national assessment in education is in its infancy in New Zealand. It is recognized that the requirements of assessment for national monitoring may conflict with assessment of a formative nature within the schools because of differing requirements for the numbers of students assessed, the type of assessment advisable, and the…

Developing a conference presentation involves both assembling and delivering the materials. In selecting a topic, speakers should consider their own prior knowledge and experience, the topic's interest and significance for them as well as for the audience, and the amount of information available. They can research materials on the chosen topic…

Canonical correlation analysis is a sophisticated multivariate technique that subsumes all parametric methods (the "t"-test, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multivariate analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of covariance, and discriminant analysis) as special cases. This bibliography lists 83 applications of…

Ten informal papers given at Discussion Forums to U.S. groups are provided which address current South African related issues as they touch upon the South African Information Exchange (SAIE) initiative. Papers have the following titles and authors: "Is There Space for American Involvement in South African Education?" (Merlyn C. Mehl);…

Benefits of attending research conferences for the master's-level graduate student are described. The following goals and benefits cited by Carsrud et al. (1982) are applied to the graduate student: (1) incentive for students to undertake independent research, the results of which will be reported at a convention; (2) communication with others…

This work studies the difficulties children have solving two-step word problems of a given structure (e.g., 7 lollypops/2 chocolate bars X 6 chocolate bars). Thirty-six children between the ages of 9 and 14 years were individually observed solving problems of the above type. Other tasks, repetition of the problem and model recognition, were used…

Investigated was the question of whether understanding is explained by means of concepts referring to tasks, being domain-specific for certain subject matter areas, or is it explained by concepts which extend across tasks and are not domain-specific? Also explored were: (1) which explanatory concepts are present, that is, which steps and…

This group of papers from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) comprises six papers presented at the plenary session and two papers from the Bibliographic Control Division of IFLA. Presented at the plenary session were (1) the opening address by the President of IFLA; (2) brief reports from sections and round tables of the…

Reported are results of a study designed to determine the experimental effect of three low-inference teacher clarity variables on student achievement in science. College students (N=41) were randomly assigned to one of two groups defined by the teacher's clarity in the lesson, i.e., high clarity versus low clarity. After a lesson in basic genetics…

The importance of research training for the undergraduate psychology major is examined. Undergraduate research projects should provide experience in generating a design, implementing the project, writing the report, and presenting it to others. Research training courses should be tailored to fit both the individual student's needs and abilities…