Describes a study designed to identify relationships between selected characteristics of postsecondary occupational program administrators (i.e., locus of control, age, and years of experience) and their use of strategic planning behaviors. Indicates that most administrators lack adequate knowledge and understanding of strategic planning. (MAB)

This paper provides an overview and discussion of a study of young children's knowledge and understanding of the management of waste materials. It describes a semistructured interview and discussion methodology used to ascertain details of children's knowledge and misconceptions about this key environmental issue. (LZ/Author)

Adolescents (n=151-158), adults (n=18), and scientists (n=5) were involved in two studies conducted to identify concepts of heat energy and temperature held by each of the participants and investigate the impact of a middle school science curriculum designed to help students understand everyday thermal events. Results indicate that each group had…

Study explored how analog type and format and learner's prior knowledge would affect transfer outside of an experimental setting, examining the relationship between the analog's contextual elements and high school freshmen's performance on a science problem. Some students spontaneously applied structural elements on the analog to the solution. (SM)

Whether interest improved students' metacognition was studied with 33 nursing students and 51 college freshmen. With differences in prior knowledge controlled, nursing students, for whom the content was related to interest, made more accurate metacognitive judgments than college freshmen. Results emphasize the effects of prior knowledge in…

A reading comprehension instructional program designed to improve knowledge and use of the text structure was analyzed in two complementary studies involving 72 high school students. Readers trained in the program demonstrated improved comprehension and were able to transfer their knowledge to other texts. (SLD)

The New Standards Project has designed research to describe educational standards in other countries using an ethnographic case-study approach. Data review and analysis are organized by fundamental questions, the answers to which constitute a contextualized account of what students are expected to know and be able to do. (Author/SLD)

Explores ways people learn from text. Content overlap between a text and the reader's prior knowledge is identified as one factor. Methods are proposed to identify whether a text is suitable for readers with a specific background. The usefulness of coherence gaps that stimulate constructive activities is discussed. (SLD)

Sixty elementary students with learning disabilities were interviewed about parallel domains of uncontested and contested knowledge on the topic of space, including questions of morality and questions of empirical law. Students clearly distinguished between uncontested and contested knowledge, suggesting that they are capable of working with…

A feminist perspective is brought to bear on past and present scholarship on Canadian English-language educational administration. The review and synthesis of selected recent research suggests that women's experiences and feminist thought are, as yet, an "other" perspective. (SLD)

Medical school faculty members' broad understanding of their domains has atrophied as specialization has increased. Medical students need teachers who can integrate the specific areas of a subject with overarching themes. Expanding the values of the university to once again include the scholarship of integration and teaching would provide the best…

Describes how kinesiology employs different methods for gaining knowledge and explains how epistemology can be used to organize introductory kinesiology courses or textbooks. The epistemologies used to organize subdisciplines are rationalism, empiricism, science, and subjectivism. An epistemic approach to a foundations course or textbook helps…

Two experiments with 89 fifth-grade and 166 intermediate-grade students with learning problems found that specific strategy training improved fifth graders' level of knowledge and performance on a categorical memory test, and metamemory and metacognitive reading training improved metacognitive knowledge and academic achievement of the learning…

A survey instrument concerning knowledge and skills needed by educational diagnosticians was developed and validated by 137 members of the Council for Educational Diagnostic Services (CEDS). Validated statements were used to formulate a policy statement which was approved by CEDS membership. (JDD)

Presents a framework within which to organize and synthesize existing knowledge about children's understanding of the mental states of imagination, pretense, and dreams. Concludes that by the age of three, children understand important fundamental aspects of the mental nature, origin, and truth-relation of fictional mental states, but that their…