A survey of 54 British mental health professionals found respondents were reasonably knowledgeable about childhood sexual abuse. However, they were not very comfortable, competent, or supported in their work with these clients. Less experienced staff were more likely to feel supported. Those who received training and/or supervision felt more…

Examined how varying levels of geographic expertise facilitated reasoning with maps as representations of the earth's surface. Found that geography experts performed significantly better than novices and preservice teachers, and experts' performance was differentiated by the reasoning in which they engaged. Explored implications for understanding…

Issues related to the development of test items to assess pedagogical content knowledge for an elementary school licensure test are discussed. The subject test is the Connecticut Elementary Education Certification Examination. Several items useful for assessing pedagogical content knowledge are described. (TJH)

Children's ability to adopt perspectives and then apply schematic information on-line while listening to stories was investigated in 2 experiments with 59 second graders and 60 fourth graders. Although both subject groups had the knowledge to identify errors, fourth graders were more likely to apply such knowledge on-line during comprehension.…

The passage of Public Law 99-457 has both quantitative and qualitative implications for assessment. Educators working with infants and young children must become more familiar with assessment strategies and limitations including psychometrically sound assessment of complex and controversial family variables, and health and environmental risk…

A college-level introductory psychology course was completed by gifted adolescents. Post-course and remote-post-course measures for the 100 participants and controls demonstrated that knowledge gain from course participation was substantial and long-lived, affecting the quality of the students' understanding, their ability to generalize and apply…

Thirty children, aged 36-83 months, were interviewed to ascertain the extent of their awareness of their orthopedic disability. Parent and teacher interviews determined types and frequencies of discussions about the child's disability. Occurrence of discussions at home, but not at school, was significantly correlated with awareness. (Author/JDD)

Analysis of statements by 869 students and 21 faculty at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) concerning learning, using the SOLO (structure of observed learning outcomes) Taxonomy, identified key concepts in learning in eight categories: learning definitions; factors influencing learning; learning strategies; learning styles; aspects…

A job analysis helped develop specifications for physical education (PE) assessment of the Praxis Series for beginning teacher evaluation. A national sample of PE teachers, administrators, and college faculty judged knowledge domains for importance and created 128 crucial knowledge statements for beginning PE teachers. An appendix provides the…

Responses of Australian students from grade 8 (n=53) and grade 9 (n=56) to questionnaires concerning health and fitness were correlated to locus of control. A significant negative correlation was found between student knowledge and the belief that health and fitness are controlled by chance. (Contains 14 references.) (MDH)

Examined levels of parental knowledge of PL 94-142, participation in special education related activities, and satisfaction with special education services. Respondents (n=112) were knowledgeable about PL 94-142, involved in their child's special education services, and generally satisfied with services their child was receiving. (JBJ)

Reports a study that surveyed college students to identify individuals to whom peers turned as sources of information about AIDS, emphasizing risk behavior, perceptions of condom use, knowledge, and perceptions of sexually transmitted diseases. Results indicated the dynamics of AIDS opinion leadership differed between the sexes. (SM)

The cognitive and metacognitive knowledge of a proficient bilingual sixth-grade reader who was Latina was studied by comparing her reading processes with those of a marginally proficient bilingual reader and a proficient monolingual reader. Four key dimensions are identified that distinguish the proficient bilingual reader's performance. (SLD)

This article gives a comprehensive description of a theory for efficient assessment of knowledge. The essential concept is that the knowledge state of a subject, with regard to a specified field of information, can be represented by a particular subset of problems that the subject is capable of solving. (SLD)

The use of base rate information by professionals (n=161) and undergraduates (n=97) in deciding probability of sexual abuse was studied. While professionals better prioritized the evidence of abuse in hypothetical cases based on sexual behaviors, both groups misestimated the probability of abuse for a child from a population with a known base rate…