Phased retirement policies are more or less attractive financially and more or less accommodating of individual differences. They are also implemented in varying ways, variations that especially affect departments and academic programs.

At the core of democratic citizenship is deliberation: citizens' tendency and capacity for debating issues of common importance. This study considers civic organizations--often found to be political mobilizers--as political microcultures: environments for political discourse that structure participants' understanding of the practice of…

A content analysis of interviews with an ethnically diverse group of 202 children aged 6 to 10 describes what children think racism is, and examines associations between age, ethnicity, and children's thinking about racism. Children's narratives capture many dimensions of racism, including stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and ethnic…

In the 20 years since the federal report on education "A Nation at Risk" appeared, much has been written on test scores of students in the United States versus their counterparts elsewhere. One of the issues is whether their scores are in fact inferior, or merely a statistical difference due to their universal schooling philosophy. Since…

In the past ten years the Web has attracted many educators for purposes of teaching and learning. The main advantage of the Web lies in its non-linear interaction. That is, students can have more control over their learning paths. However, this freedom of control may cause problems for some students, such as disorientation, cognitive overload and…

Although lexical decision remains one of the most extensively studied cognitive tasks, very little is known about its relationship to broader linguistic performance such as reading ability. In a correlational study, several aspects of lateralized lexical decision performance were related to vocabulary and reading comprehension measures, as…

This article explores the styles of word reading and word spelling used by beginning readers in the French language. The aim of the study was to find out whether "sub-lexical" and "lexical" styles of reliance, which has been observed in children learning to read and spell in English, exists in French, a language with a more transparent…

The study investigates the relationship between memory updating and arithmetic word problem solving. Two groups of 35 fourth graders with high and low memory-updating abilities were selected from a sample of 89 children on the basis of an updating task used by Palladino et al. ["Memory & Cognition" 29 (2002) 344]. The two groups were…

The authors examined individual differences in reading development in English and Finnish. English-speaking Canadian children were assessed once per year in Grades 1-5, and Finnish children were assessed twice per year in Grades 1-2. Results from latent growth curve and simplex analyses showed that initial status was generally negatively…

This paper makes connections between the research reported in this issue the broader area of second language studies focusing on learner language, interaction, individual differences, linguistic analysis, and language learning and teaching. Theoretical, empirical and ethical challenges posed by technology-based second language studies are…

Twenty-seven full-time students within the Physician Assistant Studies Program at The University of Texas--Pan American were anonymously surveyed to determine their levels of stress while enrolled in their first semester. The majority of respondents reported that their stress levels at this point in the program tell within the moderate to…

Extrapolating from current developmental theory and using practice-to-theory/theory-to-practice methods, the authors propose a framework for individual diversity development among faculty, staff, and students. The model offers individuals in-depth cognitive, affective and behavioral frameworks of development toward consciously valuing complex and…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether children with Asperger Syndrome and children with autism exhibit difference sensory profiles. The Sensory Profile (Dunn, 1999), completed on 86 individuals with Asperger Syndrome and 86 persons with autism matched for age, revealed differences in three of 23 areas evaluated: (a) Emotional/Social…

This qualitative multi-case study explored four young leaders' idiosyncratic leadership styles manifested within the context of their classrooms (toddler and preschool). In order to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity and variety of early childhood leadership and provide holistic descriptions of young leaders' emerging leadership…

Effective professional learning requires that staff developers thoughtfully plan to meet varying teacher needs and be responsive to differences--that they model the differentiation teachers will practice in the classroom. Staff developers must be mindful of participants' current learning needs and plan according to their readiness, interest, and…