Book Club started over 12 years ago with the goal of creating an alternative context for reading instruction--one that would get students excited about reading and discussing books. Since then, Book Club's combination of excellent literature, relevant writing activities, and student-led discussion groups has proven effective in classrooms. This…

Oprah Winfrey is one of the wealthiest and most powerful entertainers operating in the media today. More than mere celebrity, however, she represents the notion of the heroic for her fans. In a sense, she operates as a television evangelist offering advice on secular issues of the day. This paper explores Oprah's role in influencing audiences to…

The years when a young child's language skills are "exploding" are the years between three and five. What can make a dramatic difference in a child's life is if parents take a few minutes a day to read to him or her. Reading to a child helps him or her become a successful reader. The child develops a sense of phonics and learns that stories have a…

Fifty core tasks that are generally performed by and important for secondary school beginning teachers are identified. Participants (n=297) were asked to judge the importance of each task. College students (n=476) were asked how confident they would be in doing these tasks as if they were beginning teachers. Rasch technique was used to scale the…

New ways are proposed to look at data from the Canadian School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) using item response theory (IRT) modeling. The focus is on the traditional test of the SAIP 1997 mathematics study. The test is two-staged in that the first 15 items, of median difficulty, were to be completed beforehand by all students as a…

The first purpose of this study is to do a comparative analysis in terms of the item difficulty and discrimination index between Mathematics Placement Test Form A and G. The results seem to suggest that items on both forms of the placement test are equally difficult. However, items on form A appear to have more discrimination power than items on…

Refugees to the United States are fleeing intolerable conditions and arriving to a new, very unfamiliar environment with many possibilities and sometimes conflicting expectations. Some are able to focus on their new life; others experience significant psychological, emotional, and physical adjustment problems. English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL)…

The allegory and fantasy in Madeleine L'Engle's four novels: "A Wrinkle in Time,""A Wind in the Door,""A Swiftly Tilting Planet," and "Many Waters," make the books powerful means for addressing the violence pervasive in the lives of so many young people. These books are a valuable curriculum addition because…

A move away from the text book-based, class-room delivered, time-specific meetings, etc. was utilized in a graduate class in educational leadership. The more flexible approach utilized some of the emerging technologies with students responsible for selecting among multiple options. A group processing approach with self and peer evaluation and…

High School and Beyond (HS&B), is the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES's) national longitudinal study of the high school sophomores and seniors of 1980. As one component of the base year data collection, teachers were asked to fill out a short questionnaire concerning those HS&B students whom they had taught during the…

Teacher makes a plea for more constructive attitudes toward art education and makes suggestions for formulating changes to improve the discipline. Also presents teacher reaction to his evaluation of the current status of art education. (RK)

This chapter describes the theoretical and methodological foundations of behavior modification, the behavioral analysis of the retarded child and teaching programs for retarded children. (Author/RK)

Findings showed that the different conditions of acquisition produce equivalent long-term retention. (Author/MB)

The addition in this study of both identical and similar test items did not influence the ability to recognize recurring characters. (Authors)

Major aim of this study was to distinguish clearly between two interpretations of acquiescence response style. (Authors)