The role that independent colleges and universities play in meeting the national interest of providing educational opportunity is not always recognized. The information in this report demonstrates how independent colleges and universities provide affordable access to students from a diverse array of backgrounds. Students who attend these…

This book is a collection of research papers and respected philosophical statements on how secondary school students learn science best. Taken together, these papers serve as the basis for the Project on Scope, Sequence, and Coordination of Secondary School Science (SS&C). This book explains where the learning ideas of the SS&C Content…

Discusses the overlooked problems of privilege and oppression inherent in the American educational system. Argues that a national political commitment to a truly democratic society is required before inequity can be eliminated in education and all social institutions. (FMW)

This article is intended to dispel the myth that Latinas and Latinos and other urban high school youths of color are not capable of performing at high academic levels. Much research shows that youths of color are underrepresented and underserved in gifted education programs. The authors describe the four success factors to which 10 working-class…

Our purpose here is to discuss education policy issues in the context of empirical evidence. We note that many commonly held beliefs about Australian education such as, the relative performance and participation levels of Australian students; the importance of socioeconomic background on educational outcomes both relative to other countries and…

In the last two decades the proportion of children of color in public schools in the U.S. has increased to about 40%. However, this has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in teachers of color. Many college and university teaching institutions have attempted to deal with the increase in the number of students of color in the public…

This scientifically representative poll of 1,200 Floridians finds that public opinion about K-12 public education spending is seriously misinformed. Floridians think public schools need more money, but the main reason is that they are badly mistaken about how much money the public schools actually get. Key findings of the study include: (1) Half…

Though AIDS case rates among Asian Pacific Islander Americans (APIs) in the United States remain relatively low, the number has been steadily increasing. Scholars, policy makers, and service providers still know little about how confident APIs are in carrying out different HIV risk reduction strategies. This article addresses this gap by…

For the thirty-fourth year, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Jacksonville, FL. A limited quantity of these Proceedings were printed and sold in both hardcopy and electronic…

The Water and Molecular Networks (WAMNet) Project uses graduate student written Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) computer simulations of the molecular structure of water to assist high school students learn about the nature of water. This study examined: (1) preconceptions concerning the molecular structure of water common among high…

One hundred and forty students in grades 6 and 7 were asked to process 32 science statements. Half of the statements were consistent with their prior knowledge, whereas the remaining facts were inconsistent with it. Half of the students were instructed to read the sentences for understanding (reading controls). The remaining students were…

This study reports the efforts of the Water and Molecular Networks Project (WAMNet), a program in which high school chemistry students use computer simulations developed at Boston University (Massachusetts) to model the three-dimensional structure of molecules and the hydrogen bond network that holds water molecules together. This case study…

Recent documents like the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics'"Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics" have described coming changes in the mathematics curriculum and evaluation. Operating from the point of view that instruction and assessment are closely linked, that good teachers constantly assess students…

"Becoming Successful Problem Solvers" is a 12-episode video series designed for use with middle school students. The materials are intended to create new assessment tools for teachers, to develop instructional devices that are useful in promoting problem solving in middle school classrooms, and to promote classroom discourse about…

Comprising mostly succinct expository statements, guidelines, and charts, this presentation attacks many cultural and educational myths in the areas of the grading and grouping of students at the middle school level. It stresses the importance of understanding what intelligence and academic success really are, and suggests ways in which teachers…