Elementary teachers engaged in weekly conversations about their students' writing. Conversations were guided by a protocol that began with an assessment of students' writing samples and then moved to the generation of instructional ideas. The conversations were analyzed for what the teachers talked about and the extent to which they generated…

Despite increasing interest in interlanguage pragmatics research, research on assessment of this crucial area of second language competence still lags behind assessment of other aspects of learners' developing second language (L2) competence. This study describes the development and validation of a 36-item web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics,…

Recent research has documented silence/reticence among East-Asian international students, including Chinese students, in Western/English classrooms. Students' communication competence and cultural differences from the mainstream Euro-American society have been identified as two primary barriers to participation. Placing emphasis on individual…

Objective: To examine a statewide sample of school counsellors' reporting behaviour of suspected cases of child sexual abuse, and their need for further education in this area. Design: A questionnaire using four hypothetical vignettes on child sexual abuse requested information on the degree of suspicion, reporting behaviour and familiarity with…

For educators, the importance of understanding adolescents' concepts of caring is critical. This paper explores early adolescents' perceptions of barriers to caring and is part of a large ethnographic study on caring in middle schools. This study was conducted in two midwestern middle schools in a large urban area. A total of 101 students,…

This study examined young children's cognitive engagement during classroom book reading with different types of books in Greek kindergarten schools. Twenty teachers read four books--two fiction (familiar/unfamiliar story format) and two information books (expository/narrative text). As expected, children's and teachers' cognitive engagement was…

The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) survey of California Latino youth perceptions of college financial aid reveals: (1) Ninety-eight percent of respondents felt it was important to have a college education; (2) Thirty-eight percent of respondents did not feel the benefits of college outweigh the costs; (3) Not being able to work and incurring…

In this study, we examined relations between kindergartner's emotional security, task involvement and achievement and teacher's supportive presence in a cognitive training setting, in which the familiarity of the teacher was varied. Participants were 48 kindergarten children (mean age = 51.65 months); 16 children were trained by their regular…

This paper reports the results of a survey of student satisfaction with electronic library resources other than the online catalog at Wayne State University. Undertaken in Fall Term 2000 as a class project for a marketing course, a student team designed, administered, and analyzed a survey of a random sample of students. Almost 40% of the…

Translation and cultural adaptation of rating scales are two critical components in testing culturally and/or linguistically heterogeneous populations. Despite the proper use of these scales, challenges typically arise from respondents' language, culture, ratiocination, and characteristics of measurement processes. This study investigated factors…

In this year-long qualitative study we found that most early childhood student teachers involved children with special needs in project work and realized its benefits. The factors that promoted children's involvement were familiarity and interest in the topic, comfort with the size and composition of the small group, and the use of open-ended,…

A total of 271 students in the 2nd, 7th, and 12th grades from the midwest, northeast, and southeast regions of the United States were surveyed. The survey consisted of fact-based questions about the recent events in the Persian Gulf, and questions designed to elicit value judgments about the international role and current leaders of the United…

Describes a means for determining student knowledge in science. Written in student-level language, WALLS contains statements about science knowledge within bricks on a worksheet. Students shade in bricks they know or activities they have done and part-shade any they are unsure about, giving a differentiated starting point that allows them to plan…

Researchers in this study sought to construct an instrument specifically designed to measure counselor trainee attitudes toward alcohol and drug abuse. The instrument, the "Counselor Trainee Attitudes Measure" (CTAM), used for this research was developed collectively by the researchers. The CTAM gathered demographic data including undergraduate or…

"How can this Abstract Algebra course help me to teach Algebra in high school?" To professors of prospective mathematics teachers, this type of question has a resounding familiarity. Because students are unclear as to the relationship between upper division mathematics courses and the high school curriculum, answering the opening question to the…