Interviews with 30 successful undergraduate Latino students in a highly selective university revealed that although most students came from "at-risk" socioeconomic backgrounds, they had access to specific personal and environmental resources that made them invulnerable to negative consequences of educational risk. Stresses the importance…

Examines the inherent dichotomy between the competing needs of maintaining emotional safety and exploring sensitive issues in social studies classrooms. Argues that an effectively safe classroom can serve as a necessary backdrop for addressing controversial issues even in the earliest of grades. Maintains that most teachers simply ignore these…

Maintains that art education in an urban environment needs to move beyond multicultural awareness. Urban art education must stress art as a way of knowing about the world, a way of making nonviolent statements about social and environmental problems, and as a way of working cooperatively with other students. (MJP)

Discusses the relationship between teaching women's history in the Netherlands (where it is a compulsory secondary education subject) and the self-concept of women students. Examines three levels of women's history content included in the curriculum. Includes verbatim responses to the course from women students. (MJP)

Explains how teachers differentiate their teaching practices to support inclusive classrooms. Discusses system of democratic governance, culture of collaboration, commitment to and capacity for professional growth, strong leadership, and concern about equity and the success and well-being of individual students as factors for transforming school…

Presents ways of learning through movement. Discusses the beginning of the systems approach, contents of the systems class, and connections to mathematics, social studies, English, science, and physical education. Focuses on the interconnectedness of basic core learning to other subject areas. (DLH)

Research shows that the minority/white achievement gap is real and is having devastating effects on youth and society. However, school leaders can influence certain educational causes and correlates (like teacher qualifications and expectations). Programs must be individualized, and narrowing the achievement gap should become a national priority.…

The issue of underachievement among the gifted has captured the interest of educators sporadically over the past thirty years. In the most basic definition, an underachiever is a student who does not achieve in the academic areas at a level consistent with his or her capability. When underachievement is applied to the gifted, it becomes a more…

We study the benefits of junior kindergarten for linguistic-minority 4-year-olds compared to their linguistic-majority classmates from the same low-income neighborhoods. At the end of the school year, linguistic-minority children made significantly greater improvements in language skills than their host society classmates. At the mid-year point,…

This review covers articles published during the recent two decades on attitudes toward the participation of individuals with disabilities in physical activity. Research literature has been retrieved and analyzed by content and quality, across research type categories (cross sectional vs. intervention) and members of the participation context…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new learning environments instrument designed to aid investigators and practitioners in measuring and researching the psychosocial learning environment in post-secondary distance education. Using a three-stage approach, the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) was…

This paper looks at the relationship between the study behavior and academic engagement of individual students, the norms and attitudes of close friends, and the peer culture of school. The authors are particularly interested in how the academic orientation of a student and his or her close friends invites or protects him or her from harassment by…

In March 2002, members of the National Technology Leadership Initiative (NTLI) met in Charlottesville, Virginia to discuss the potential effects of ubiquitous computing on the field of education. Ubiquitous computing, or "on-demand availability of task-necessary computing power," involves providing every student with a handheld computer--a…

This study assessed school climate for both interpersonal and intrapersonal character traits and examined the links between school climate and students' perceptions of safety at school. Sixty-four elementary and 159 secondary students completed questionnaires in the spring. Findings revealed that character traits were reliably assessed for both…

The failure to consider factors that make a key contribution to violence and its prevention may create serious problems of construct validity for school violence surveys. Further, few studies have assessed the relative importance of variables contributing to perceptions of safety by examining correlations between survey items and overall feelings…