Emerging research on the brain and learning is challenging long established notions about how children should be taught. The authors use this research as a basis for providing more powerful strategies for reaching all students, including those with learning and behavior problems that have led to educational failure. Suggests ideas and practical…

Countless good ideas, research, and reforms (silver bullets) have yielded only modest improvement, suggesting problems of research (dogma, design, duration, and domain) and problems of distribution--expanded teacher responsibility. This article recommends revamping teacher education, remediating or firing incompetent teachers, and reducing class…

Believes that the key to solving the problems in the schools (the shootings and low-achievement levels) is by trying to understand the current generation of students. Maintains that the means to understanding students is for teachers to visit the various schools in their communities and share their time with those students (CMK)

Preservice teachers' responses to students with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder who reportedly failed a classroom test were investigated. Undergraduate students (n=49), during their semester of student teaching, rated six vignettes that varied by student gender, attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis, and medication…

Current theory and research in the area of motivation indicate that while frequent academic failures are clearly undesirable, temporary failure in challenging academic tasks can have important psychological benefits when followed by successful coping. However, teachers' responses during our school reform programme suggest that some special…

This article presents the results of two recent empirical investigations at universities in South Africa (University of Pretoria and University of South Africa) where an attempt was made to identify the pre- and post-enrolment factors that lecturers and students perceived as having the most important influence on students' success in their…

This paper draws together the as yet nascent literature on the development of failure-avoidant patterns of behaviour. These are behaviours intended to minimise risk to self-worth in the event of failure, thereby avoiding the negative impact of poor performance in terms of damage to self-worth. Self-worth protection, self-handicapping, impostor…

The present study was a randomized trial of the efficacy of psychosocial and injury prevention-based coach training programs for reducing fear of failure (FF) among youth swimmers aged 7 to 18 years. Results revealed that (a) psychosocial training increased coaches' use of reward/reinforcement, (b) the FF measure demonstrated strong factorial…

Our article analyzes historical data for New York State on the percentage of school board budget proposals that are defeated each year and panel data that we have collected on budget vote success for individual school districts in the state. We find that changes in state aid have little impact on budget vote success. Defeating a budget in one year…

People can learn as much from what they do not do right as what they do. This article describes such a failure. The author had gathered six students together for an interview concerning art and their lives--and things became so chaotic, he thought it was all a wash... until he went back and listened to the tape. Only then did he realize that what…

In recent years, constructionist methodologies such as discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992) have begun to be used in sport research. This paper provides a practical guide to applying a discursive psychological approach to sport data. It discusses the assumptions and principles of discursive psychology and outlines the stages of a…

Three decades of mounting academic and testing requirements are snagging growing numbers of students in the 9th grade. "The bulge" is the name education researchers give to the percentage increase in students in the 9th grade over the same period. This article reports on factors that might explain the growing 9th grade bottleneck and…

The turnaround recommendations and framework in "The Turnaround Challenge" grew out of both new research and synthesis of extensive existing research, as carried out by Mass Insight Education & Research Institute and its partners since September 2005. If the main report is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, this supplement represents…

The educational achievements of children in foster care have been determined to be below average in individual studies. In the present investigation, 31 studies were examined via four meta-analyses to answer questions regarding the educational status of children in out-of-home placements in multiple countries. Data analysis encompassed the…

Michael G. Thompson knows independent schools. He attended them in elementary and secondary school, and has worked in them as a psychologist. He consults with more than 30 schools a year, addressing a myriad of issues related to complex human interaction. He has written often in "Independent School" about everything from understanding the social…