Three research projects were conducted over a three year period among secondary school students in the United Kingdom, the United States (Virginia), and West Germany in order to determine students' understanding the 40-year confrontation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. These studies included 1991 students…

Knowledge of the meanings of political affect, political cognition, and political participation is important in understanding U.S. youths' socio-civic beliefs, values, and behaviors. Political affect refers to loyalty and affection for a political system. Research studies indicate that, even if youth have hostile feelings about how the U.S.…

Practical or "tacit" knowledge has been argued to be critical for managerial success. Mentoring may be one way in which tacit knowledge is learned. This study examined the relationships of tacit knowledge, mentoring, gender, and competence. Subjects were managers (N=57) in a southern city. No significant gender differences were found on…

Structural views assume that a single, comprehensive system of thought underlies cognitive activity. Although developmental research with both children and adults has tended to assume the validity of a structural model of cognitive development, this assumption may be invalid when applied to the social cognitive judgments of adults. There are two…

This study was undertaken to determine whether normal children's descriptions, explanations, and ideas about the treatment and prognosis of learning disabilities change with age. Participating were 120 middle-class children of average intelligence, equally representing both sexes, and each age from 7 through 12 years. Subjects, individually…

As a result of a pilot program developed to foster communication between the regular class teacher and the special education resource teacher, a survey was completed by 103 teachers. Surveys were then statistically analyzed to determine the attitudes of the regular classroom teacher toward the special education resource program. Teachers were…

A process model to explain bugs produced by novices early in a programming course are presented. (The term "bug" refers to an error in a person's behavior, particularly an error in a computer program they have written.) The model is motivated by interviews of novice programmers solving simple programming problems. The key idea is that…

The booklet describes an approach to individualizing parent involvement in special education programs. A family needs checklist addresses parents' knowledge (of community resources, educational programing, support services, and general information about normal developmental levels and tests and measurement); support; skills in working with…

This paper draws on recent research findings in contending that starting with a student's "known" is a particularly sophisticated concept that, when understood both theoretically and practically, will permit teachers to help students read their texts with greater ease. It argues that students may have more prior knowledge about a topic…

This report discusses research and theory that explore relationships between comprehension and knowledge acquisition. Studies are reported that indicate the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between initial comprehension activities and abilities to remember. It is noted that the value of comprehensive activities depends on how people must later…

The study examined community based services for developmentally disabled children and their families. A mail survey questionnaire was completed by 66 parents whose children, ages 3 to 21, were attending special schools in a Midwestern suburb. The findings reported are concerned with parents': (1) utilization of primary and professional resources…

A model has been developed for studying the relation between text structure and reading comprehension, emphasizing the reader's use of world knowledge and text-structural knowledge to evaluate and interpret meaning from text. When the highlights of the model are considered from the perspective of various expository texts used in research on…

This study investigated pregnant teenagers' knowledge about infant development during the period of their pregnancy. The sample consisted of 98 teenagers between 14 and 19 years old who were pregnant with their first child; all were planning to keep their babies. The group was approximately 50% black and 50% white, 50% middle class and 50% working…

This project was designed to develop research strategies and hypotheses for evaluating the effectiveness of exhibits. An exhibit on the role of the Federal Government in science and technology was used as the subject matter. Two basic groups of viewers were used, casual viewers and paid experimental viewers. Both were tested on knowledge gained…