In recent years, e-learning system has become more and more popular and many adaptive learning environments have been proposed to offer learners customized courses in accordance with their aptitudes and learning results. For achieving the adaptive learning, a predefined concept map of a course is often used to provide adaptive learning guidance…

This research examines the individual-level and contextual correlates of punitive attitudes in the United States. Prior research suggests that the demographic composition and economic conditions of geographic areas influence public support for punitive policies. Yet, these findings rest on assumptions about individual perceptions of minority…

This study mainly investigates the factors affecting the learning effects in a blended e-Learning course for Mathematics. The research targets of this study are 48 junior high school students. After they had received traditional lessons in class as well as the accompanied e-Learning lessons, the influences of their learning portfolios and learning…

Eisner, Gardner, and others have argued that the arts should be better integrated into the K-12 curriculum. In this study we examine three high school senior boys who, as part of a unit of instruction on identity, each produced a mask through which he artistically expressed his sense of self. Using a sociocultural framework based in the work of…

In previous publications the author reported on the use of a website dedicated to French songs for an advanced French comprehension course at the university level. The present article analyzes web-tracking data captured from the website over two terms--fall 2003 and winter 2004. The variations in the amount of time students spent working on the…

The purpose of this study was to explore perceived concerns of preservice music education teachers across four different points in professional development. A 45-item Teacher Concerns Checklist (Borich, 2000), based upon Fuller and Bown's (1975) three-stage model of teacher development, identified respondents' levels of self-concerns, task…

This study examines a collaborative reading of John Keats's poem, "When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be," by two high school seniors with attentional difficulties in a mainstream British Literature class, with a focus on one of the students, Rita. The data consist of a retrospective verbal protocol during which the students recounted their…

In this article we examine the development, over 1 year, of mathematical discourse communities in 2 eighth-grade mathematics classes in a suburban public middle school. The curriculum topics included probability, functions, graphing, data analysis, and pre-algebra. The 50 students were heterogeneously placed; most were from upper-middle-class…

To date, reports of reading interventions for students at risk for emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) that have been published in refereed journals have involved sustained support by university or school-site personnel. This study examined the efficacy and feasibility of a reading intervention that 2 general education teachers implemented in…

The authors used the 5E learning cycle (engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate) and a pulmonary carbon dioxide mystery to introduce eighth grade students to the study of chemistry. The activity engages students in measurement, data collection, data analysis, media and internet research, research design, and report writing as they search…

This paper is an extension of the author's earlier work on developing management information services and creating a culture of assessment in libraries. The author will focus observations on the use of data in decision-making in libraries, specifically on the role of leadership in making evidence-based decision a reality, and will review new…

Education, it seems, is increasingly driven by the numbers. Whether it is measuring student performance or a school district's ability to balance the books, one will find data out there about it. So much data, in fact, that it is difficult to sort through all the numbers to get the needed information. This article describes California's Ed-Data…

Despite the agreed-upon success of writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs among those who administer and teach them, there remains a paucity of hard evidence proving that they work. Most published articles touting the success of writing across the curriculum programs cite only anecdotal or soft evidence--not the kind of evidence that would…

The Michigan State Data Center Program, a source of statistical information on the people of Michigan and its economy, creates custom products and mapping profiles from its deposit of major decennial, economic, and agricultural products from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Michigan State Data Center Program is an umbrella organization enhanced…

This CD-ROM disc contains data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study First Follow-up (BPS:90/92) in the form of a Data Analysis System (DAS) public release. This DAS release does not contain all of the variables collected as part of BPS:90/92, but it does contain most that are of interest to analysts for descriptive…