Background: Despite there being considerable evidence to suggest that friendships are central to health and well-being, relatively little attention had been paid to the friendships of people with intellectual disabilities. Methods: Friendship activities involving people with and without intellectual disabilities were measured over the preceding…

The works of the Belgian neurologist and educationist Ovide Decroly (1871-1932) extended over the medical and pedagogical fields as well as both the practical-professional and the theoretical-disciplinary fields. For this reason, Decroly seemed to be a suitable starting point for a contribution to the problem outlined by Hofstetter and Schneuwly…

A critical question in school choice programs is whether relatively low-income urban parents have the ability to gather the information they need to make good choices for their children. Choice is expanding, particularly in American cities. Without good information, the benefits generated from expanding public school choice (via No Child Left…

Some have called the current generation of college students the Web generation. They are wrong! The pace of technology change continues to quicken. The effects of globalization and social networking have not yet had their full impact. At best, the present students represent a transitional group. The tools we use define us, and the media revolution…

Research on African-American and Latina/o youth has been dominated by studies that focus on "problem" adolescent behavior. Typically, they explain youth crime, delinquency, and violence as individual pathological behavior or cultural adaptations stemming from social disorganization in their communities. This article argues for a more…

Although it is important to study the negative outcomes experienced by victims of bullying, it is equally important to study the factors that may buffer victims from distress. Thus, the relationship among social support, victimization, and internalizing-externalizing distress from bullying was investigated. Participants were 355 middle school…

This article reports on the results of a mixed method case study investigating the relationship between professional learning community (PLC) activities and teacher improvement in a first-year middle school. Data were collected from core academic sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers using a professional development survey, teacher interviews,…

Action research includes a variety of methods engaged in by practitioners who wish to learn more about their work and the possibility of constructively changing it. This paper describes an action research dissertation project that focused on the work of a group of community activists to construct new understandings of their work and, as a result,…

What happens to unruly kids? Apparently some of them grow up to become college professors. The author recently attended a workshop with a group of professors who admitted to being rather incorrigible, until they had a significant learning experience facilitated by middle and high school teachers who let them know that resistance was futile.…

According to a January 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 55 percent of teens (ages 12 to 17) report having created a personal profile online, and an equal number regularly use social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Of those, 91 percent use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently. With all…

This dissertation explores the use of formal and informal networks through cyber- and traditional communication methods in the college search and selection process by native and immigrant students to examine various postulates and propositions of social capital theory. In addition, the analysis of cybernetworks used by disadvantaged, college bound…

Contextualised and ubiquitous learning are relatively new research areas that combine the latest developments in ubiquitous and context aware computing with educational approaches in order to provide structure to more situated and context aware learning. The majority of recent activities in contextualised and ubiquitous learning focus on mobile…

The present study examined the midlife outcomes of 548 adults who became parents before the age of 20. Participants were from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and were followed prospectively from age 18 until age 53. Their life-course development was compared to sample members who gave birth at the mean age for the WLS. Midlife outcomes were…

Examining the overseas experience of language learners in diverse contexts through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, studies in this volume look at the acquisition of language use, socialization processes, learner motivation, identity and learning strategies. In this way, the volume offers a privileged window into learner…

This truancy prevention publication provides a general background discussion on the issue of truancy but mainly centers on the nuts and bolts of developing and implementing an effective community wide collaborative to address truancy. The first section provides some understanding of the factors associated with truancy and the resulting high costs…