Conducted unstructured interviews with 18 male street prostitutes between the ages of 13 and 22 to determine the extent of accurate knowledge they possessed concerning four common sexually transmitted diseases. Found that subjects possessed more factual information on gonorrhea and syphilis than on herpes and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.…

The goal-setting component of a professional growth evaluation model for teachers was examined through a survey of 572 teachers, interviews with 65 teachers, and interviews with 12 teacher-supervisor pairs. Data suggested that teachers did not really develop high quality goals and that they lacked knowledge about the process. (SLD)

Adult volunteers (n=1,215) in Singapore and San Francisco (California) rated the degree of obviousness of 12 findings of process-product research on teaching. Respondents could not always distinguish true findings from opposites. Differences in gender, knowledge about teaching, and cultural background had inconsistent effects on judgments of…

This theme issue brings together studies of professional knowledge and its transformation and use. Becoming a professional is a process of fusing theory and experience. Assumptions about learning in general do not necessarily apply to the professional training of teachers, and their applicability should be questioned. (SLD)

Two features of a new horizontal conceptualization of expertise are explored. Polycontextuality refers to the multiple ongoing tasks apparent in expert work, and boundary crossing is considered as a cognitive process that characterizes much expertise. Three case studies, one in a Finnish elementary school, illustrate these concepts. (SLD)

Two experiments involving 125 college and graduate students examined the interrelationship of subject-matter knowledge, interest, and recall in the field of human immunology and biology and assessed cross-domain performance in physics. Patterns of knowledge, interest, and performance fit well with the premises of the Model of Domain Learning. (SLD)

This study of 15 pupils (ages 7-10) with severe learning difficulties found that mental age (as measured by the British Picture Vocabulary Scale--a measure of receptive language ability) was correlated with counting performance. The study also found that being able to count accurately did not automatically lead to understanding the principles of…

Two experiments involving 65 college students support the hypothesis that, when students read about a familiar topic, they use a reinstatement-and-integration strategy in which familiar knowledge is retrieved from long-term memory along with some information about the original context in which facts were learned. (SLD)

Examines the training background and self-reported knowledge levels held by a group of professionals on specific topics in child sexual abuse. It was found that many professionals working in the area of child abuse treatment, including social workers, medical personnel, and psychologists, have not had training on topics directly related to their…

In one experiment, infants and children were accurate in their judgments about the knowledge of a baby, child, and adult. In two further experiments, children reported that an infant, child, or adult observer would be able to identify an object from an identifiable or nondescript part of the object. (BC)

Assessed changes in contraceptive knowledge of 58 white female undergraduate students following computer-assisted instruction program on contraception. At six-month follow-up, students evidenced knowledge gains on duration of pill use, rationale for triphasics and biphasics, appropriate contingencies for missing two days of pill, danger signs…

Three studies investigated 98 children's and 252 adults' implicit knowledge about learning disabilities. Overall, the studies suggested that professionals outside the field of special education, as well as nondisabled children, have fairly well-developed ideas about what constitutes a learning disability. Exemplars of tacit knowledge matched most…

Examined whether clinical psychology practice facilitated access to and acquisition of wisdom, defined as expert knowledge in fundamental pragmatics of life. Compared responses to wisdom-related dilemmas from young and older clinicians with responses from other professionals. Young and older adults did not differ on factual knowledge, procedural…

Describes research on memory in preschool children. Each child was studied for scene and list memory. Domain-specific and general knowledge were not found to be strongly related to memory performance. Object typicality did not have a strong effect on memory, but size did. (GH)

Assessed general knowledge of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), beliefs about preventing AIDS, and sexual behavior among 60 sexually delinquent and 57 nondelinquent runaway adolescent males. Sexually delinquent youths scored significantly lower than nondelinquent youths in general knowledge of AIDS and were not able to discriminate safer…