The report submitted by the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education includes faulty claims and reasoning that devalue special education and hinder efforts to better meet the needs of students with disabilities. We question the commission's findings and recommendations regarding closing the achievement gap, practicing prevention,…

Although there is a debate about the importance of self-esteem in education, many primary teachers wish to help children who suffer from low self-esteem. However, in order to do this, we first have to identify such children. It is almost taken for granted that we can make quite accurate judgements based on the knowledge built up through day-to-day…

In this paper we examine how the figure of the teenager is positioned within the discourses and practices of commercial online media. In particular, we explore how the popular, Australia-based web portal "ninemsn" works discursively to shape the identities of young people. Ninemsn not only constructs and circulates selected…

This paper reports on an exploratory case study involving the development of a model for identifying and measuring individual engagement in critical thinking in an online asynchronous discussion (OAD). The model is first developed through a review of the literature on the construct and subsequently applied to the content analysis of the…

Some educators have developed teaching strategies to address issues of racism and discrimination in the classroom. Although these exercises are provocative and no doubt meaningful for students, they generally do not address the impact that racial group membership has on student response to provocative issues like affirmative action. In the…

In this paper the authors explore two pedagogical moments that occurred within a diversity-focused secondary teacher education course, giving specific attention to Genevieve's and Debra's reflections as course instructors. We explore the ways in which instructors find themselves challenged, engaged and provoked to rethink taken for granted ideas…

Alcohol remains the drug of choice for many adolescents; however, the nature of the relationship between athletic involvement and alcohol misuse remains ambiguous. In this article, we used a longitudinal sample of over 600 Western New York adolescents and their families to explore the gender-specific and race-specific relationships between…

Purpose: This study explores the effects of participation in a program designed to enrich friendship and reduce loneliness among women in later life. Several hypotheses based on the need to belong, socioemotional selectivity theory, and the social compensation model were tested. Design and Methods: Study 1 involved two measurement points, one at…

This article presents a framework for school administrators developed by Mesa Unified School district used in identifying and assisting the subtly struggling adolescents. Mesa's "safety net" approach targets middle grades students in the midst of their formative, pre-high school experience. Here, it is stated that the first step to identify a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the grieving process of parents who were faced with the dilemma of donating organs and tissues of their underage brain dead child, and to explore the impact of their decision on their grief process. A grounded theory methodology was adopted and a semi-structured interview was conducted with 11 bereaved…

Although teacher underestimation of ability can have a detrimental effect on children's achievement and motivation, the accuracy of Australian teachers in identifying intellectual giftedness in young children has not been investigated. This study followed 14 children, identified as potentially gifted while preschoolers, for up to 3 of their early…

Ogbu's theory of "burden of acting white" has been one of the most frequently cited studies to explain black and white achievement gap. However, emerging studies have argued that Ogbu's theory may be limited when examining variability of school achievement among black and white students. Research shows that in addition to culture, other social…

There is increasingly negative sentiment against IQ-achievement discrepancy as a method to identify children with learning disabilities (LD) and, more broadly, intelligence as an explanation of poor academic performance. The evidence for this latter view was examined by reviewing 13 studies involving 1,542 children who were at risk or reading…

Drama is unique in providing an (inter)active context wherein participants can comprehend and stretch the limits of their day-to-day realities through the embodiment of critical reflection and both rehearsed and improvised action. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence from the authors' work as teachers, drama facilitators, and…

High levels of academic achievement in Asian educational systems have generated interest in the study of motivational patterns of students in these contexts. The objectives of this paper are firstly, to provide a review of existing literature on the study of motivational styles amongst students and secondly, to identify the occurrence of different…