This report presents the results of a survey of over 1,500 Nebraska students in grades 8 and 10 in 1988. Students in 37 schools were asked about their involvement in physical fights; about their access to weapons; about being victims of robbery, physical assault, threats and attempts at forced sex; about their attitudes toward violence and…

To determine the relative importance of school and individual factors in the determination of science learning, achievement test scores were analyzed in relation to individual- and school-level factors in a national sample of about 2,000 tenth-grade students participating in the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. Hierarchical linear analyses…

The importance accorded mathematical connections in the professional literature is not properly reflected in the relatively small number of empirical investigations of students' mathematical connections. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mathematical connections that students form and use in solving nonroutine problems. Two main…

A study explored the match between teachers' expectations for book reports and the outcomes their students exhibit. Subjects, 67 fourth graders, 61 seventh graders, and 56 tenth graders from low, middle, and upper income groups in 9 schools in 2 different school systems, completed a questionnaire that included questions concerning their…

This portrait of a high school literature classroom is one of a series of several such portraits which depict diverse classroom settings of high school literature, and which result from the second year of a teacher-research project in the greater Albany, New York area. This article portrays teacher Karen Dunne and her tenth-grade class of average…

The lessons in this 10-day unit for high school sophomores are designed to: (1) acquaint students with terminology related to visual literacy; (2) enable students to make comparisons between drama for the theater and drama for film; (3) acquaint students with the basic structural elements of film such as movement, lighting, sound and music,…

The construct of locus of control formulated by Rotter (1966) is being increasingly emphasized in personality functioning, since it appears to be related to several classes of behavior. It is also being considered as an important construct in cross-cultural research. Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly important, not just because they may…

Designed to engage the learner in active learning while allowing for different degrees of guidance, this workbook represents an innovative approach to the instruction of Early American literature. The Personal Literacy Jackdaw workbook provides reading, writing, and speaking activities to help the tenth/eleventh grade language arts student develop…

This study examined the efficacy of Judith Langer's PreReading Plan (PReP) with Hispanic and other high school students. Specifically, the study investigated (1) the effect the PReP has on learning when used with predominantly Anglo and Hispanic high school students in conjunction with a social studies textbook reading assignment; (2) whether…

A study was conducted to evaluate the final outcome of the Section 98 writing project, a 3-year collaboration between the School District of the City of Saginaw and the University of Michigan, and to successfully employ the gap reduction design with the pre- to post-test results stemming from the writing project. Students in six sections of…

Much of the focus in science education has been on the theoretical constructs and practical implications of conceptual change. History of science, cognitive theory, and alternative conceptions have been used as backdrops for the study of the child's conceptual movement away from naive beliefs about scientific phenomena. In this study, conceptual…

The passage dependence of an item refers to the degree to which it is necessary to read the associated passage in order to be able to answer that item correctly. This paper studies the value of obtaining data about passage dependence in the construction of reading comprehension achievement tests. Passage dependence indices were examined in several…

High School and Beyond (HS&B) is a longitudinal study, sponsored by the Center for Statistics (CS), of nationally representative samples of high school sophomores and seniors of 1980. In the 1980 base year survey questionnaires and cognitive tests were administered to over 30,000 sophomores and 28,000 seniors enrolled in 1,015 public and…

Two groups of learning disabled (LD) secondary school students (ages 16-18) were studied to determine if such factors as levels of intelligence and achievement contribute to success in high school. The first group of students (N=10) were sophomores enrolled in special education resource classes for one period each day and were addressing Louisiana…

In 1982 the Michigan Educational Assessment Program's Test of music learning was administered by local school staffs to fourth, seventh, and tenth graders from 36 randomly selected schools in 33 districts. Group tests were administered to 5700 students, and 500 students took individual tests. Test items were developed from objectives in the…