Compared family characteristics and developmental outcomes of African-American children from three rural contexts in South Africa: the homeland, the resettlement, and white-owned farms. Child outcomes were highly intercorrelated in all three contexts, but correlations among family variables, and between family and child variables, showed different…

Theories of cognitive, racial identity, affective, psychological, and moral development can be helpful in designing college student leadership training programs. Course design must take a variety of learning styles into consideration so as many students as possible can successfully understand the material and integrate it into their leadership…

Considers the ways in which young children, their families, and teachers and staff benefit from older adults' participation in early childhood and day care programs. Discusses the recruitment, screening, training, orientation, and supervision of older adults in early childhood programs. (BB)

Ten two-year-old children with periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), a brain injury associated with prematurity, were evaluated using language samples. The five children with delayed cognitive ability produced significantly fewer lexical tokens and spontaneous verbal utterances than did chronological age-matched nondelayed PVL children. (Author/DB)

Reports the design of the "Mechanics Baseline Test," an instrument to assess students' understandings about concepts in mechanics. Discusses how comparisons of test results with extensive baseline data can be used to evaluate instruction at all levels. Includes a copy of the instrument. (MDH)

A study of 33-month-old children, their mothers, and their older siblings concentrated on arguments used when 2 family members were in conflict with a third. There were some direct relationships between partners' arguments. Arguments children used with their mothers differed from those they used with their siblings. (BG)

Relates research findings on the way primary-grade students communicate mathematical ideas through the use of symbols to a framework for students to investigate the part-whole relationship of quantity. Discusses children's problem-solving abilities, linking word problems and symbols, the importance of context for understanding symbols, and the…

Investigated is whether children would spontaneously model problems with superfluous information and whether their modeling would facilitate problem solving. Included are the addition/subtraction story problems used in this study, introduction, method, results, discussion, and conclusions. (KR)

Five principles of learning for young children with handicaps (functioning below a developmental age of one year) are presented, with descriptions of strategies that can be used to facilitate ascendance to higher levels of cognitive-social-communicative functioning. The principles include frequent adult-child interactions, meaningful context for…

An Assimilative Base Model is presented and related to the improvement of instruction in writing for learning-disabled and other children. The model, based on Piagetian theory, involves three interchange processes: automatic skill development; puzzlement leading to reorganization of relationships; and strategy development leading to enrichment of…

Examined the performance of kindergartners from middle- and low-income families on arithmetic calculations presented in a nonverbal format and in three verbal formats. Children from middle-income families performed better than those from low-income families on verbal calculation tasks but not on the nonverbal task. (BC)

Identifies the unsophisticated assumptions and conjectures, both intuitive and empirical in character, underlying secondary school science students' (n=25) portrayal of scientific knowledge and its production. Structured interview protocols explored not only the students' substantive knowledge base but, perhaps more important, their ability to…

Identifies metaphor as a powerful tool when utilized to facilitate concept formation pertaining to global ecological systems and universal concerns. Provides an illustration of how an instructional metaphor, spaceship earth, can be used in the classroom to help students create new meanings for abstract and complex ideas. (MCO)

Examined the association between early caregiving and children's cognitive competence at school age. Mother-child interactions were measured when children were 6, 13, and 24 months and 6 years of age. Children's cognitive competence was assessed at 6 and 8 years of age. Mothers' nonrestrictiveness and verbal stimulation were significant predictors…

Presents teaching methods to rectify the tendency of students and even teachers to divide the smaller number into the larger in problem situations requiring division, while recognizing the impossibility of the answer in the situation. (MDH)