Noting the importance of kindergarten for establishing skills critical for school success, especially for today's diverse kindergartners who differ in the extent and types of early care and educational experiences they have had prior to kindergarten, this study focused on the gains in reading skills made by language minority and mainstream…

This paper is built on the assumption that sound language learning is based on high quality teaching, and that foreign language teachers therefore play a very important role in the effectiveness of foreign language education. This leads to several questions: How can foreign language teachers be prepared in their pre-service teacher education…

Research suggests links between authoritative parenting style, parental involvement, autonomy, and school performance during adolescence. This study examined the nature of change over a 2-year period of parenting style, parenting involvement, and autonomy among special education students; compared these variables among regular and special…

This study examined the actual and perceived effects of full-day kindergarten on students' growth in play and problem solving, language and literacy, and socioemotional development. Participating in the study were two kindergarten teachers and their classrooms serving similar diverse inner city populations in western Canada, one a half-day program…

Prompted by widely held concerns about middle schools' academic rigor and the effectiveness of activities designed to help early adolescents develop in non-academic realms, many middle school educators have renewed efforts to develop curricula and instructional strategies that challenge students academically and expand their intellectual…

The experiences of five California school districts in implementing English immersion instruction for all limited-English-speaking students are described and compared. The districts range from populous urban settings to small, isolated rural communities. The first part of the report profiles the five districts, and the second part sets forth three…

These three papers are from a symposium on human resource development (HRD) professional development. "Mentoring as a Tool for Faculty Development: Predicting Positive Outcomes for Mentors" (Ellen J. Mullen, John Van Ast, Harry Grant) describes a study of the relationship between mentoring outcomes and mentoring activities and mentor and mentee…

Self-employment among graduates of England's higher education institutions (HEIs) was examined. The study included five elements: literature review; qualitative development stage involving exploratory interviews with 16 key players and in-depth interviews with 15 self-employed graduates from Sussex University and the London Institute; mail survey…

This study compared the relative effects of three kindergarten schedules on children's achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics, and on children's prosocial classroom behaviors. Participating were 47 children attending all-day kindergarten, 56 attending alternate-day kindergarten, and 44 attending half-day kindergarten. Individual…

A study compared test scores obtained by adult learners taught oral, written, and/or interpersonal communication skills by four different methods over two different lengths of time. The learners and those in a control group, which was not taught at all, were 171 bank employees. The teaching methods were executive coaching (one tutor and one…

This report describes the outcomes of a study that examined teacher efficacy in order to generate an exploratory and explanatory theory of teacher efficacy in the context of four heterogeneous fifth and sixth grade classrooms. It investigated how the four elementary teachers identified as being efficacious described the relationships between…

This paper addresses issues and cost benefits of World Wide Web-based education systems. It presents the results of an effort to identify problems that arise when considering this media and suggests conceptual solutions to some of these problems. To evaluate these solutions, a prototype system was built and tested in an engineering classroom; the…

This document reports the results of the Kansas Assessment Program for reading and mathematics for 1999. The mathematics assessment is given in grades 4, 7, and 10. Over 30% of the 4th graders met the individual student standard for excellence in mathematics, with 8% of 7th graders and only 4% of 10th graders meeting the standard. Five-year trend…

This study investigated the effects of instructionist (navigational, functional) versus constructionist (adaptive) World Wide Web (WWW) site environments on collaboration, achievement, attitudes, and perceived level of learner controls reported by students after working in cooperative dyads within the different types of Web-based learning…

This report describes the Long-Term Benefits of Head Start (LTBHS) study designed to address questions regarding the long-term effects of the Head Start program on the children and families served. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 presents a review of the research on Head Start, focusing on Head Start Planned Variation research, major…