Drawing on the literature and a survey of first-grade teachers, this paper provides a summary of the ways children grieve, children's ideas on death, ways to help children contend with the difficulties surrounding death, and teachers' feelings about discussing death in the classroom. Twelve teachers completed a questionnaire about how to…

This booklet provides short treatment options for educators, counselors and others on grief issues that today's youth often face. Children may encounter the trauma of fatal illness, accidents, suicide, homicide, and terrorism that they experience either directly or indirectly through the media. They can also face abuse, divorce, multiple moves,…

This study focuses on how teachers are responding to changes in the new global history curriculum and the attendant tenth grade New York Regents examination. It compares the messages broadcast by the new state curriculum and assessment policies with individual interview data collected from ninth and tenth grade New York state global history…

The British National Curriculum suggests that a range of thinking skills need to be taught. But can children be taught to think? This paper takes the view that all thinking is embedded in a particular context. It gives an account of its author/educators' work with children, draws attention to distinctive features of their approach to teaching, and…

These four newsletters focus on issues related to adult basic education and the challenges faced when teaching adult learners. The first issue looks at the characteristics of learning disabilities, providing information to help teachers determine whether a learner has a learning disability and who might be appropriately referred for testing. The…

Based on Joseph Heller's novel "Catch-22," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that active readers evaluate the actions and statements of characters in a novel; and active readers apply the ideas of a novel to contexts outside the novel. The main activity of the lesson involves students writing a paper on a…

Three significant changes have impacted the teaching of social studies to young adolescents in the past decade: (1) development of the curriculum standards for social studies by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS); (2) growth in the number of middle schools, which are premised on the integration of content; and (3) expansive use of…

The social, cultural, and historical documents and commentary in this casebook illuminate the reading of "The Catcher in the Rye," a novel that has become an important rite of passage for many young adults. In addition to a literary analysis, the casebook acquaints students with the larger world in which Holden Caulfield, the…

This casebook of materials about William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" will enrich students' understanding of the historical context of the play and encourage interpretations of its cultural meaning. Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" reflects perennial cultural concerns about order and freedom, particularly as they clash in the…

This study investigated the possible impacts of language and curriculum differences on the performance of test items by subpopulations of students. Focusing on Measurement and Geometry items completed by students in French- and English-language schools in Ontario made it possible to explore the differences and to compare the item response theory…

A study presented the results of two national, random sample surveys about the use of and interaction with the television ratings system by parents and children. The telephone survey was conducted between April 2-26, 1998, and involved interviews with 1,358 parents of children ages 2-17 and 446 children ages 10-17. Results were reported for 69…

Recognizing that what, how, and how much children learn in school depends in large part on the social and emotional competence they developed as preschoolers, this monograph examines the current state of research regarding the social and emotional risk and protective factors that predict early school problems or success. The first part of the…

This paper describes and analyzes definitions of democracy and civic education of teachers and students in each of three types of secondary schools in an emerging democracy: the Czech Republic. The paper's theoretical framework is rooted in anthropological and sociological notions of the social context of culture that attend to the fact that all…

This study explored the role of perinatal vulnerability (PV) in mothers and infants in relationship to the development of interaffectivity and attachment, and the relationship between interaffectivity and attachment. Participating were a low-risk sample of 74 middle-class mother/first-born infant dyads who had participated as volunteers in a…

A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of different modes (modalities) of assigning raters to test items. The impact on total constructed response (c.r.) score, and subsequently on total test score, of assigning a single versus multiple raters to an examination reading of a student's set of c.r. responses was evaluated for several mixed-item…