This case study describes a 2-year (1988-90) demonstration dropout prevention program, a collaboration between a rural school and a university. The dropout prevention program attempts to identify effective teaching strategies that will increase the academic successes of at-risk sixth-grade students and expand the use of those strategies among the…

This paper considers whether ethnicity is a social construction that is constantly being recreated in a nexus of shifting social relations rather than a set of perceptions and behaviors that remain constant and stem from a youth's membership in an ethnic group. Student responses about ethnicity from a larger study of student role and engagement in…

The Communicative Development of Toddlers with Cerebral Palsy (COCP) project developed an assessment-intervention program for non-speaking children with cerebral palsy. The goals of the project's Assessment-Intervention protocol are to teach the child to communicate in an appropriate, effective, and efficient way in different situations and with…

The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret teacher decision-making with ethnically diverse students. A new paradigmatic theoretical framework formed through the confluence of constructivism, multiculturalism, the teacher-as-decision-maker, and semiology guided the research. The research site was a suburban middle school located in the…

Seymour Papert, who holds the Lego Chair for Learning Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks back over a decade during which American schools acquired more than three million computers and assesses progress and resistance to progress. Stories about visionary teachers who have used computers to enrich learning provide a…

This study reports on the characteristics of selected public libraries into which adult literacy programs have become relatively integrated. The study addresses the following issues (1) the form of leadership in those libraries in which literacy programming has become integrated; (2) the organizational and staff support that promotes library…

The purpose of this exploratory research was to examine two middle school mathematics teachers' views of the nature of mathematics and their perceptions about the purpose of education as it translates into planning for instruction and teaching. In addition, students in one seventh grade mathematics class of each teacher were surveyed about their…

The Mass Communication and Society section of the Proceedings contains the following 19 papers: "Talk Radio as Forum and Companion: Listener Attitudes and Uses and Gratifications in Austin, Texas" (John Beatty); "'Willingness to Censor': Developing a Quantitative Measurement across Speech Categories and Types of Media"…

Smart Start is North Carolina's partnership between state government and local leaders, service providers, and families to better serve children under age 6 and their families. The aim of the program is ensuring that all children enter school healthy and ready to learn. This study examined parent and business involvement in local Smart Start…

A study examining the classroom English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learning experience of six language-minority children from kindergarten through fourth grade is reported in a case study of one child, a native speaker of Punjabi, in her kindergarten class. Data were gathered, using ethnographic methods, in classroom observation, some videotaped…

This paper focuses on experiences with real-time communication in distance classes that contrast with the face-to-face setting from which teachers and students brought their teaching-learning perceptions and behavior. Observing the uncomfortable and unforeseen experiences that distance teachers and students have, the authors studied the reasons…

This paper presents a qualitative description of one of Hawaii's educational reform projects: the Electronic School Pilot Project, an innovative method of integrating advanced telecommunications technology into the classroom as a proposed cure for statewide inadequate or low performance on national standard exams (e.g., ACT and SAT). The…

This study compared student outcomes and evaluations in nine educational psychology courses across: (1) student variables (age, gender, ethnicity, student status, and major); (2) instructor variables (experience teaching at the college level, experience teaching at the K-12 level, and educational level); and (3) course variables (placement of…

In 1995, the International Consultative Forum on Education for All (EFA) commissioned case studies in developing countries as part of a mid-decade review of progress in expanding access to basic education. This paper examines provision of basic education (grades 1-9) in Yemen, focusing on obstacles to girls' education in rural areas. The report…

This book addresses the needs of college and university instructors for an integrative, comprehensive approach to teaching and learning in higher education. The book has two purposes: first, to place teaching and learning in higher education within a theoretical framework, and second, to provide practical strategies for teaching. The introductory…