A longitudinal qualitative study examined the variety and scope of literacy experiences in the homes of families from diverse sociocultural backgrounds. Original participants were 41 children enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs during the 1992-93 school year and their families from public elementary schools serving Baltimore City neighborhoods…

Students' goals (motives) for their schooling have been the focus of much recent research and have been shown to significantly influence important aspects of their cognitive engagement and academic achievement. This paper presents the results of a qualitative investigation into the nature and characteristics of students' social and academic goals,…

Helping school, district, and/or community leaders facilitate discussions with community members about improving schools, this guide discusses how to use informal focus groups to gather information about what is important to people in the school community. The guide helps users gather information in a systematic way, organize what they hear,…

A qualitative longitudinal study, first of four parts, compared developmental movement levels and academic learning levels in young children. Subjects were 28 children of various ages who were not working up to grade level but who did not qualify for learning disability services. Parents completed a detailed demographic survey and a neurological…

This booklet illustrates and compares three important standards (levels of expectation) set for diploma examination writing in Social Studies 30: excellent, proficient, and satisfactory. Sample papers are used to illustrate the scoring criteria for group leaders and markers are presented, along with accompanying commentaries, or rationales, that…

A qualitative study described the practices that supported literacy development within one first-grade classroom community and focused on one child, beginning with his entry into first grade and ending near the end of his second-grade year. Practices such as the deliberate valuing of children's live at home, the connection between home and school…

A qualitative case study examined professor perceptions of the influence of race on the establishment of credibility in the classroom. Non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews elicited participant-generated conceptualizations of credibility of three Black and three White professors in the Northwest. Results indicated that…

Disorder and linearity are essential to science, but empirically derived laws indicate that counts do reflect underlying structure and can support inference. Starting from the premise that a linear structure underlies data, G. Rasch deduced that the necessary and sufficient mechanism to convert from counts to linear measures is the logistic ogive.…

This study uses a comparative case study of two high school teachers' units about the U.S. civil rights movement to explore the construct of subject-specific pedagogy. The research examines each teacher's views of subject matter and learners as a means of understanding and explaining instructional practices. Through that investigation, a number of…

This study compares the reflections of preservice teachers when they are considering pedagogical issues in general methods courses versus content knowledge combined with pedagogy in social studies methods courses. The paper presents a theoretical framework for the study conducted among 44 Master of Education preservice teachers of a large…

This qualitative research study investigated fraternity members' perceptions of how involvement in a fraternity and in student government influenced their college experiences. Four fraternity members who were also members of the student senate were interviewed. Three of the participants were Caucasian and one was African-American. Interview…

This study had three objectives: (1) to examine and describe factors that help to create a positive attitude toward learning; (2) to examine and describe factors that led to students' participation in the process-oriented approach; and (3) to examine and describe perceptions and experiences that students had involving the process-oriented…

A qualitative study was conducted of the way faculty perceived the effects of national rankings on two departments in a large public research university. The department of physics and astronomy and the school of business of the university were both ranked in the top 20 nationally, but both were ranked lower than the administration and faculty…

Recent research has investigated the impact of neighborhood violence on children's mental health and moral development. Based on the view that the way in which children construe their experiences of violence mediates the impact of unsafe neighborhoods and that children's narrative is important for children's construction of self and incorporation…

Interviews were conducted with 20 out of 40 primary teachers who, 3 or 4 years earlier, had participated in inservice workshops on Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), a research-based approach that emphasizes using children's mathematical knowledge to teach mathematics and who had consented to do the interviews. Although all but one teacher were…