Over the past four decades, there have been numerous discussions on student achievement and school failure. Within this time, the debate over the causes and consequences of racial differences in achievement has been at the heart of the nation's social and political life. The author discusses the major developments in achievement research over the…

Many researchers have investigated the effects of students' prior knowledge upon learning chemistry, for example, the tenacity of alternative conceptions. Knowledge about learning also shapes students' learning of chemistry. This research describes the development of CHEMX, a survey instrument that measures an aspect of knowledge about learning…

The current study, with its foundation in expectancy theory, investigated the relationships between teacher expectations of future outcomes for students within the autism spectrum. Fifteen teachers, in private and public school settings, completed a survey that assessed their expectations about the importance and the likelihood of specific…

The chapters in this volume do not represent the whole of the Middle East and North Africa, as such a collection would have been too large for one volume. Rather, the selection here is intended to present different perspectives on a range of educational issues, relevant to a particular focus or country, or common to a number of countries in the…

A longitudinal study of teachers' computer use and personal variables which might predict that use was performed. The study was begun with questionnaires administered to 167 preservice undergraduate elementary education majors during their final year of study, and was repeated 3 years later after the 100 participants had graduated and had worked…

This book is about developing "resiliency," a new paradigm of student and staff development that offers schools a coherent, research-based framework for the achievement of success and lifelong learning for all. A six-step plan of action for resiliency building is introduced. The resiliency model offers hope based on scientific evidence…

Guidelines regarding self-efficacy assessment are highlighted in the first section of this paper. In the second section, the issue of specificity versus generality of measurement is clarified. And last, preliminary results of a study of eighth graders (n=172) are presented which demonstrate that: (1) the optimal level of specificity of any…

A study of junior high schools (MacDonald 1995) found that students and administrators held significantly different perceptions regarding the nature, extent, and management of violent behaviors. This paper presents findings of a study conducted 1 year later that more thoroughly examined students' perceptions of the effectiveness of current school…

An advocate of the Natural Approach to second language instruction discusses problems associated with error correction, highlighted in her personal experience when she visited Italy to explore her heritage and use her Italian language skills. After requesting to have her errors corrected by a native-speaking friend, the visitor experienced great…

This paper describes the status of the standards movement in relation to the middle grades and in terms of the policy context of the 1990s. It also outlines the potential of standards-guided reform at the middle level. By the early years of the 1990s, two key assumptions characterized the new wave of proposed reforms: that schools needed to…

A study reviewed the data on three innovative San Diego, California Unified School District programs: the Reading Recovery program, Turning Point project, and the Hispanic Reading project. The Reading Recovery Program is an intensive, individualized program focused on improving first-grade student reading skills, serving approximately 80 students…

This paper reports on a study that asked six groups (totalling 175 third-year medical students), before taking their surgery clerkship, to make predictions about their experiences in the clerkship. For male students, those in the high-expectation group had records of consistently higher mean academic performance in their first 2 years of medical…

An exploratory study examined teachers' perceptions of students' motivation to read and the relationship between those perceptions and students' reading achievement. Focus groups of third- and fifth-grade teachers were convened and given an initial questionnaire. A second questionnaire based on those findings was developed and field-tested with…

This study involved a cross-cultural analysis of exemplary teachers' dispositions and the philosophical beliefs that underpinned and informed the ethical dimension of their roles. Four exemplary secondary teachers from each of three countries (England, Ireland, and the U.S.) participated. Participants completed a pre-interview survey then engaged…

This study examined motivational determinants of academic delay of gratification (ADOG) with 196 undergraduate college students at a large midwestern university. Students completed the academic delay of gratification scale, in which students are presented with 10 hypothetical situations and they indicate their preference among options offering…