Recognizing the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse politically disengaged population along with the central role of schools in preparing democratic citizens, this study investigated how 3 skilled secondary social studies teachers taught about and for multicultural democracy to prepare students for active and effective citizenship through…

The consequences of the separate and unequal education policies of the apartheid years in South Africa persist into the present, and without specific redress measures will persist into the future. The disparities are most serious in the higher education gateway subjects Mathematics and Physical Science. In order to track education redress it is…

Mastering sentence-construction skills is essential to learning to write. Limited sentence-construction skills may hinder a writer's ability to translate ideas into text. It may also inhibit or interfere with other composing processes, as developing writers must devote considerable cognitive effort to sentence construction. The authors examined…

This study presents a procedure for detecting differential item functioning (DIF) for dichotomous and polytomous items in testlet-based tests, whereby DIF is taken into account by adding DIF parameters into the Rasch testlet model. Simulations were conducted to assess recovery of the DIF and other parameters. Two independent variables, test type…

Using data from the evaluation of the Fast Track intervention, this article illustrates three methods for handling attrition. Multiple imputation and ignorable maximum likelihood estimation produce estimates that are similar to those based on listwise-deleted data. A panel selection model that allows for selective dropout reveals that highly…

Master Mind is a commercial game, popular in the 1970s, that has been extensively used in psychological and educational research. Here, a dynamic assessment format is developed in order to test metacognitive skills in individuals with mental retardation. The main objective is to obtain valid scores that adequately reflect individual differences…

Researchers, practitioners and theorists have raised concerns about the special education delivery and classification processes in the United States. The President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education report (PCESE:2002) examined these concerns and existing special education research, reports and opinions to develop recommendations for…

This article is based on field research that we conducted in a north Bali school (SLB Bagian B) for deaf students. The study involves documentation of the linguistic environments within which deaf people operate, focusing on the use of sign languages by deaf and hearing people. The following material on policies and practices oriented toward the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between academic self-regulation, self-efficacy, and two student self-belief systems, identity style and stage of change, for 210 college students enrolled at a private research university. High scores on the informational identity, contemplation stage, and action stage subscales and low…

Writing instruction in the United States now routinely takes place in networked environments. For adult learners in open admissions institutions, the literacy demands of the academic sphere and the public nature of the acts of writing in networked environments can create alienating experiences. This study examined the possibilities that the genre…

Following initial scepticism, the growth and developments within distance education in India have been tremendous. This paper records those developments in one of the largest distance education systems in the world with regard to its contribution to national development. The paper also examines curricular programmes, access and equity, media and…

The conditions under which explicit instruction in checking, combined with worked examples, may be beneficial in learning how to translate sentences into algebraic equations was examined from the perspective of cognitive load theory. In two experiments it was shown that Grade 8 and 9 students were initially disadvantaged by the inclusion of a…

An increasing number of studies are concerned with the international comparison of the results that different education systems achieve. For example, TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA publish the results from different countries in mathematics, science and literacy. The European Commission has also published indicators and benchmarks relating to the quality…

This paper brings together the pressing problem of alcohol abuse on college campuses on one of the most promising solution--stage-based interventions applied at multiple levels. The interventions fit the Transtheoretical Model, which construes behavior change as a process that unfolds over time and involves progress through a series of stages.…

The authors examined the extent to which the Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional scales and 3-point codes of the Self-Directed Search may be considered statistically and practically equivalent across 3 different modes of administration: paper-and-pencil, personal computer, and Internet. Student preferences…