Investigates the possibilities that a reader response approach offered strong female characters to four middle school girls reading and talking about two young adult novels. Examines issues involved in negotiating meaning in such literature discussions, including real talk, "inappropriate" talk, preferences in group talk, and privileged talk.…

Analyzes effects of using carefully assisted case studies to prepare preservice teachers to be more knowledgeable and skilled in supporting children's response to literature. Finds that, over time, preservice teachers' question types shifted in amount and content, moving from teacher dominance to child-teacher dialogue. Notes teachers became more…

Summarizes this special issue on how children develop emotional and social strengths, as well as difficulties. Highlights three areas of focus among the seven articles: (1) the relation of emotional competence to social competence; (2) the socialization of emotional competence; and (3) attachment as the foundation. (SD)

Examined the moderating role of individual differences in negative emotionality in the relations of behavioral and attentional regulation to externalizing problem behaviors. Found that at two ages behavioral dysregulation predicted externalizing behavior problems for children both high and low in negative emotionality, whereas prediction of…

Uses latent variable modeling to examine the relationship between male gender role conflict (MGRC), depression, and negative attitudes toward seeking counseling services in male college students. Identifies two components of MGRC : restriction-related MGRC, which predicted 25% of the variance in help-seeking attitudes, and achievement-related…

This paper summarizes basic research on response effort in diverse applied areas including deceleration of aberrant behavior, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, oral habits, littering, and problem solving. The paper concludes that response effort as an independent variable has potent effects, and research exploring the applied benefits of…

Examines the strategies used in answering a computerized multiple-choice test where all questions on a semantic topic were grouped together or randomly distributed. Findings indicate that students grouped by performance on the test used different strategies in completing the test due to distinct cognitive processes between the groups. (AEF)

Investigates college/university professors' views on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' difficulties with listening/speaking tasks. Findings show that respondents felt that their ESL students have great difficulty with class participation, asking and responding to questions, and general listening comprehension. (55 references) (Author/CK)

Two educators studied the effect of written teacher and peer comments on ninth graders' writing assignments, creating a peer response activity and analyzing student responses to a survey. Results showed that students considered both teacher and peer comments requesting additional information and correcting mechanics most helpful in the revision…

Discusses child peer relationships in relation to teacher's role; object-conflict, sharing, and cooperation; causal, consequential, and alternative thinking; inferring and responding to emotions; perspective taking and empathy; and initiating friendship and group entry. Claims that children's discussion documents their growing understanding of…

Examines the ability of high school students to process and recall information contained in story texts, graphics, index boxes, and pull-out quotes. Finds that most efficient recall comes from information pull-out quotes and least efficient comes from information in graphics. (TB)

After hours of introducing team training, facilitation skills, and Total Quality Management tools, the old classroom practices of "chalk and talk" faded in Virginia Beach schools' technical and career education classes. Academic teachers also improved instruction, using innovative TQM tools such as nominal group voting, course mission…

A nonclinical sample of Australian adults (n=239) was surveyed for the incidence of traumatic childhood events, availability of emotional support, and the presence of a dissociative coping style. Findings suggested that lack of emotional support is an important mediator, but not a primary cause of the development of dissociative tendencies.…

Compared accuracy of an actuarial procedure for the prediction of community violence by patients with mental illnesses to accuracy of clinicians' concern ratings of patient violence. Data came from a study of 357 pairs of patients seen in a psychiatric emergency room. Actuarial predictions based only on patients' histories of violence were more…

Studies beliefs about dating violence in a sample of 298 undergraduate and graduate students. After reading 15 vignettes, respondents were asked to rate how violent and abusive a depicted incident was, what they thought was likely to happen to the relationship in the future, and what should happen following the incident. Incidents varied along…