This article presents a review of "Investing in Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development" by Timothy J. Bartik. Timothy Bartik's timely book contributes to an important conversation about the role of government in promoting investments in children in the years before traditional public schooling typically begins. Until…

This book is a significant contribution to the field of sociology of school knowledge. It looks at the historical development of the field and argues that, although this field has appealed only to a limited audience, it has the potential to reach a larger audience of scholars if an alternative research agenda could be created. (SLD)

Two of the books reviewed, "Horace's Hope: What Works for the American High School" and "The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School," discuss the future of educational reform. "Kinderculture," suggests that today's children are living with a fundamentally new reality in which corporations are the primary educators of the young. (SLD)

Reviews "Education and Democratic Theory: Finding a Place for Community Participation in Public School Reform" (A. Belden Fields and Walter Feinberg) and "The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education" (J. Henig, R. Hula, M. Orr, and D. Pedescleaux). Both books examine the political aspects of…

Focuses on the content and presentation of instructional sequences on the American Revolution in four commercial fifth-grade social studies textbook series. Discusses problems with content, learning objectives, background, and explanation. (FMW)

Describes the three most active computerized discussion forums available to educational researchers on BITNET: the Educational Research List (ERL-L), the Education Policy Analysis List (EDPOLYAN), and the Educational Technology List (EDTECH). Lists nine other BITNET discussion groups of related interest. Addresses and access information are…

Reviews four current books on the dropout problem. Two are termed state of the art, but all are limited because the needs of at-risk students are numerous, the programs for them are diverse, and theories of student engagement are not yet well developed. (DM)

Reviews "Soviet Studies in Mathematics Education: Volume 2. Types of Generalization in Instruction" (V. V. Davydov, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1990), which is useful for educational researchers because its major theory of dialectical materialism offers a view of knowledge with a significant role for activities that…

Reviews Lipsky and Gartner's book, "Beyond Separate Education: Quality Education for All," and Biklen, Ferguson, and Ford's book, "Schooling and Disability: (NSSE Yearbook Series)." Discusses the shared opinion that the direction of reform should be toward the integration of handicapped children into the regular school program. (JS)

To the debate between the Rortyan pragmatic model of scientific research advocated by Cleo Cherryholmes and the scientific realism espoused by Ernest R. House is added another model for educational research based on the realism of John Dewey's pragmatism. Constructivist and behaviorist aspects of Dewey's philosophy are explored. (SLD)

John Dewey attempted to connect knowledge and reality through a naturalized epistemology but produced an anthropomorphic ontology in which things are shaped too much by the mind. Many of Dewey's ideas are still relevant, but taken as an intact set of ideas, they are not applicable to the world of today. (SLD)

Explores relationship between text and context in pragmatism that is related to differences between pragmatism and scientific realism, as identified by Ernest R. House (1992) and repeated by Jim Garrison, and considers association between pragmatism and aesthetics. Comments concerning pragmatism and educational reform are made by suggesting how…

Explores possible reasons for the gender differences in mathematics problem-solving strategies found in primary-grade students in the study by E. Fennema and others and considers implications of the findings for mathematics instruction. (SLD)

Suggests that the instructional methods used with the subjects in the study by E. Fennema and others may have allowed teachers' gender stereotypes to be activated more than traditional instructional methods do, resulting in differences in primary-grade students' problem-solving strategies. (SLD)

Suggests that an explanation for the differences in mathematics problem-solving strategies found in the study by E. Fennema and others may be simply that the girls in the study population are less interested in mathematics than the boys and explores some implications of this explanation. (SLD)