The focus of this research is to describe children's ways of quantifying length and perimeter in response to an open-ended reasoning task. Twenty-five children from grade 2 through grade 10 were given two fixed perimeter tasks in a structured interview setting. A 1997 framework proposed by Clements, Battista, Sarama, Swaminathan, and McMillen was…

Papers in this collection, derived from several sessions of the Commission for Indigenous Education, contain insightful accounts of the role of indigenous knowledge in higher education institutions across a variety of societies. The contributors examine the move to reaffirm the significance of local knowledge and wisdom and the resulting…

Self-perception measures often suffer from inflation factors. This study compared a Likert-type scale measuring comfort (1="not at all comfortable" to 5="very comfortable") to one assessing knowledge (1="I do not know anything about this", 2="I don't know enough about this to fully understand it",…

This paper discusses the difficulties in transforming the knowledge of science into school knowledge, which is based on the interconnection of scientists/researchers, teachers, and students. Some factors should be taken into consideration during the transformation of scientific knowledge into school knowledge, including the complexity of science…

This paper describes a study of young children's understanding of what is on the inside of animals--skeletons and other organ systems. The study uses 2-D drawings based on the idea that a drawing is the representational model and is the outward expression of the mental model. The 617 drawings made by participants in the study were awarded one of…

Research on the evaluation of World Wide Web sites has already begun, but it is proceeding at a slow rate. The main reasons for this are the attempt to adapt existing methodologies to the particularities of the Web, the individual structure of Webs sites, and the issue of finding the appropriate evaluators. This study addresses these points and…

The importance of a shared memory appears to have lost its foothold in higher education. As the nation moves forward into the 21st century, future leaders are graduating with an alarming ignorance of their heritage--a kind of collective amnesia--and a profound historical illiteracy that bodes ill for the future of the republic. The American…

This focuses on movements to asses learning what is basic at various levels: movements to align curriculum to standards at all levels, and familial pressures to guarantee that children's mathematics education includes the mathematics of the future. This newsletter provides 15 articles on the above theme: (1) "What's Basic in Math Education: A…

This survey attempted to elicit from high school youth present knowledge and attitudes of the drug culture. The results revealed that 63

Cognitive and affective characteristics of a successful mainstreaming teacher are reported from a sample of administrators, regular classroom teachers, and special educators. Among the characteristics noted are love for children and a concern for their needs, positive attitudes toward and knowledge of special education and mainstreaming. (CL)

Evaluates the effectiveness of the Developmental Economic Education Project (DEEP) of the Joint Council of Economic Education and the awards program of the International Paper Company Foundation (IPCF). DEEP schools had a positive effect on students. The results of the IPCF program are less encouraging. (RM)

The knowledge of and attitudes toward genetics of allopathic and osteopathic physicians of the Mid-Michigan area was studied. The type of degrees made no difference with respect to physicians' knowledge of genetics, while their specialties and years of graduation from medical school had a significant impact on their performances. (Author/MLW)

The study compared information on autism accrued from the most recent research to the knowledge and beliefs of 80 experts and 950 caregivers. Results indicated that three areas emerge for further inservice training of caregivers: incidence and sex ratio, etiology, and attitudes toward public education of autistic children. (Author)