Part of a 20-year longitudinal study tracing the lives of 41 individuals with learning disabilities, this report focuses on individual attitudes, emotions, and conceptions related to learning disability. A salient notion emerged from participants' narratives, which they described as "acceptance of the learning disability" and a shared set of…

Surveyed instructors in the freshman seminar program at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs about effects of teaching in the program. Found several recurring themes of opportunity and challenge within three categories: professional, personal, and political. For example, faculty reported an increased sense of connection to students and…

On June 5, 2001, Brian Hancock graduated from law school. His story behind the story is significant to those concerned with reclaiming troubled teens. Ten years earlier at age fourteen, Brian was facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in adult prison. This is his story as told to Scott Larson. (Author)

Describes the work of Maria Montessori, starting with her career in medicine which gave her the unique perspective to probing the frontiers of the inner intellectual life of children. Explains how she felt every student possessed untapped potentials. Discusses how her concept of the potential of the absorbent mind of children is being…

Constructivist and developmental metatheories offer foundations for prevention- and health-oriented counseling approaches that target the whole population. Proposes an assessment model in which the counselor is directed toward four specific dimensions of human construction and development: social context, life phase, constructive phase, and…

This paper reports results from sixteen years spent investigating White racism among White people using naturalistic inquiry methods. More than 1,200 observations of Whites of diverse backgrounds and locations were made. Five psychological dispositions are identified which characterize the way White people cognitively, affectively, and…

Anthropological theory and the rites of passage model were used to understand Outward Bound (OB) student experiences of transformation. Three long ethnographic interviews with 22 OB students, conducted before, after, and 3 months after the course, revealed that although the transformational effect of the course was strong initially, additional…

Responds to a letter from a camp leader who experienced difficulty with an adolescent girl during a 3-day hike and disapproved of a staff member's response. Offers advice on handling such a problem, addressing the staff member's intervention without undermining his credibility, revisiting the situation with the group, and exploiting the…

Describes the variety of possible effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) on early childhood development in the cognitive, language, social-emotional, motor, and adaptive domains. Suggests interventions which can assist young survivors and their families. Suggests that more long-term, intensive studies be conducted on the short- and long-term…

Uses Dewey's concept of growth as "the ability to learn from experience" to discuss the learning histories of three male literacy learners. From this perspective, their progress toward goals, rather than achievement, is the primary focus. (Contains 30 references.) (SK)

Professional learning nourishes practice. Sometimes we are able to navigate daily within a community of learners or find such fellowship online. At other moments we seek out books and journals to stimulate inner voyages. The author describes how different books, journals, and Web pages have helped her along her own learning voyage. (AEF)

Within-group similarities and between-group differences are used to illustrate the socio-cultural nature of the concept-building process in highly collaborative computer science classrooms. Simultaneously, a social constructivist perspective is used to describe the individual aspects of this development. The study uses written explanations from…

This article reports on a corpus-based, developmental pedagogical intervention for the teaching of German modal particles (MPs) in which learners examined their own emerging MP use as well as that of their native-speaking keypals in the context of electronically mediated, project-based collaboration. Individual learner development was traced…

In a number of personal communications and now in her article in "Educational Researcher", Mary Juzwik repeatedly observes that some elaborations may be needed for fuller understanding of the notion of "identity-as-narrative", introduced in the article this author co-wrote with Anna Prusak "Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for…

This article presents the results of a study investigating the experiences of undergraduates acting as peer leaders in an extensive peer-led team learning program in introductory undergraduate sciences and engineering courses. In an effort to understand the facilitator experience in the program better and to report initial findings on the benefits…