While the goal of science education used to be to produce more scientists, that goal has changed with the introduction of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) (NRC 1996). Society has recognized that it is essential for everyone, regardless of vocation, to understand the fundamentals of science and technology. The phrase that has come to…

The advent of Web-based instructions, which relies upon the Internet, emphasizes the need for a clear understanding of how learners process and encode information presented in Web sites for instructional purposes. Distance educators need and want assistance in their efforts to integrate information technology into their instructions. In this…

The perspective of communities as a situated context dates back to the works of Vygotsky (1978, 1981) who posited that cognition begins at the social inter-mental level and through the process of internalization meanings become translated or assimilated into the individual level. Within this social to individual transition, learners can be…

Environmental education (EE) is a prominent aspect of graduate-level master's programs in urban and regional planning. This article draws on the results of a survey of 66 environmental planning educators in urban and regional planning programs to show what types of EE are most prevalent in these graduate professional programs and in planning…

Academic listening plays an important role in an ESL university student's academic success. Research in EAP has begun to show that ESL students have difficulty in English academic listening at American universities. Chinese students, who are from a different educational system and cultural environment, experience particular challenges in English…

Since July 1997, Hong Kong has become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the sovereignty of China. This paper compares the social well-being of Hong Kong residents before and after the change of sovereignty by analyzing six sets of survey data collected between 1990 and 2001. These are six biennial territory wide Social Indicator Surveys…

Many social indicators are based on household consumption information. The valuation of non-monetary operations is crucial for the analysis of consumption surveys in developing countries because of the importance of own-consumption and transfers in kind. What are the price statistics used in the valuation of consumption indicators? How is the…

In this paper we follow a lead provided by Basu and Basu ["The Greying of Populations: Concepts and Measurement," Demography India 16, pp. 79-89], in order to advance a class of "agedness" indices which, because they have been motivated by analogous considerations in the poverty measurement literature, can find application in…

Quality of life (QOL) is usually assessed in terms of levels. This paper, in contrast, examines the structure of the quality of life of its subjects: two groups of children at risk, children who were kept at home and those who were removed from home. The social workers who made the decisions were asked to assess the children's quality of life…

OsmoBeaker is a CD-ROM designed to enhance the learning of diffusion and osmosis by presenting interactive experimentation to the student. The software provides several computer simulations that take the student through different scenarios with cells, having different concentrations of solutes in them.

The use of technology in university and college classrooms has changed in recent years to include the use of course Web sites as a supplement to face-to-face instruction (Green, 2000). Despite this increase in the use of course Web sites in college courses, limited attention has been given to student perceptions of this pedagogical tool. This…

Data from the library job market and mounting anecdotal evidence show that there is cause for alarm. The number of full-time, professional positions in libraries is dwindling, salaries continue to be depressed, more entry-level positions are being liquidated or "deprofessionalized," and qualified job seekers are having trouble securing…

In this article, the author recalls an experience in which she participated in a training institute for online methodology that provided several practical techniques for teaching online, including how to select and place content, as well as how to facilitate online discussions and assessment strategies. Since then, she has taught online and hybrid…

Gerald Bracey has been dismayed at the uncritical acceptance of international comparisons in this country. It seems to him that otherwise competent researchers and psychometricians abandon all critical facilities when dealing with data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement--the TIMSS studies and PIRLS--or…

Preservice and experienced teachers (N = 58, from 7 universities) wrote lesson plans for a hypothetical beginning band lesson, using one page from a band method book as source material. Lesson plans were analyzed for word count, level of detail, and for strategies that appeared most frequently. Experienced teachers used fewer words than…