This qualitative study explored the presence of community voice in a newly structured inner-city elementary school in Santa Ana (California). Nearly every family at Pio Pico Elementary School lives below the poverty level, and Spanish is the primary language of 90% of the residents, with most families being of Mexican or Central American origin.…

This manual, which is intended for vocational education and training (VET) providers, does the following: explains fundamental market research concepts; highlights situations where market research can help VET providers with their planning and policy development; and illustrates the uses of market research in VET institutions. The following topics…

This study compares the results of Australian and Taiwanese Grade 10 students (N=2959) on the Students' Perceptions of Teacher Knowledge (SPOTK) questionnaire. The purposes of this paper are to quantitatively compare the mean scores of each item in the two countries and to use qualitative research methods involving classroom observations and…

The 11 papers in this volume were presented at the 1996 American Statistical Association (ASA) meeting in Chicago (Illinois), August 4 through 8. This is the fourth collection of ASA papers of particular interest to users of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey data published in the "Working Papers" series. The…

The failure of major educational reform efforts to acknowledge the multicultural needs of tomorrow's teachers illustrates the marginal status that issues of multicultural education and multicultural teacher education typically receive. This paper examines the literature on multicultural teacher education. The review suggests that teacher education…

This paper reports the outcomes of a study that utilized descriptive, qualitative methods and a series of case studies to investigate how students are diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorders, specifically Asperger syndrome under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The study focuses on students attending elementary schools in…

This book includes: a theoretical summary of the various facets of motivation, an examination of how the theoretical insights can help classroom practitioners in their everyday teaching practice and practical recommendations on how motivation can be researched and assessed. The following chapters are included: "Main Challenges of Motivation…

A study explored the lives of families and successful readers within "at-risk" environments. This inquiry sought to identify and understand the home and family characteristics that enable children to defy the myths and become successful readers and literacy users, when individuals and institutions would suggest they would fail. Through…

This study evaluated the communicative, social, and emotional development of 22 deaf Swedish pre-school children with cochlear implants over a 2-year period. Video-recordings (every 3 months) and observations of the children in natural interactional settings at home and school as well as interviews with parents and teachers provided the study…

Based on collaborative learning theories, this qualitative study describes seven adult students' experiences of learning in a context of synchronous computer-mediated communication within a distance education environment. The setting was an 8-week, Internet-based undergraduate/graduate sociology course sponsored by Indiana University Purdue…

Within the South African tertiary education context, information management is taught from a variety of perspectives, including computer science, business management, informatics, and library and information science. Each discipline has a particular multidisciplinary focus dealing with its fundamentals. To investigate information management…

This paper reports the results of a 3-year study of children's use of computers in their homes and examines the implications of such use for educators. Subjects were over 400 children between ages 5 and 12 who came from a variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds in urban Sydney (Australia). The study aimed to develop knowledge and…

The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret the cognition of a graduate student during information retrieval using the World Wide Web. The participant was a doctoral student in psychology with little experience using the Internet, and even less experience with the World Wide Web. The student performed an open search of her dissertation…

This paper provides an overview of the IT (Instructional Technology) Clinical graduate course at Virginia Tech and compares the perceived reality of the Clinical experience, in terms of benefits and concerns, with students' initial expectations. The paper begins with a discussion of the IT Clinical plan, the sociology of the learning environment…

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe the incidental learning activity of students in an asynchronous online course in a higher education setting. This research was conducted with data collected from interviews, journals, observations, email messages, and online conferencing software postings of 22 members of three sections of a…