This book is intended for early childhood educators, student teachers, practicing teachers, and parents who are interested in improving observation and assessment processes for children from infancy through the elementary school years. The book covers the history, philosophy, and practice of observing, recording, and analyzing children's behavior.…

This study examined the associations between preschoolers' behavior in their family and a couple level index of parenting style. This index is defined as the difference in the amount of emotional interaction between mothers and fathers with their children. Thirty-eight families with a preschool-aged child took part in a laboratory visit, and…

This document was prepared to help parents, educators, and concerned citizens better understand how children and adolescents actually learn. True learning involves: (1) developing a passion for learning; (2) acquiring communication skills; (3) constructing new knowledge; (4) taking part in concrete activities; and (5) developing problem solving…

Providing varying viewpoints on the "state of the art" in content reading from a cadre of authors who have contributed to the expansion of the knowledge base, this book presents preservice and inservice teachers with practical suggestions to use in their classrooms as well as the theoretical bases for these suggestions. The book provides…

A study traced the career development of 557 females from central Sweden who were participants in the Individual Development and Adjustment longitudinal study during its third year in 1968 (at which time they were in grade 6). The second part of the survey, which was conducted via a questionnaire mailed to all subjects when they were 26 years old,…

This paper compares and contrasts cases of three beginning teachers, graduates of a teacher education program that included an intervention component designed to change prospective elementary teachers' knowledge and beliefs about mathematics education. The goal of the intervention (a sequence of three mathematics courses, a methods course, and a…

This report describes a 12-week program designed to increase time on task for kindergarten students. Members of a targeted group of kindergarten students were identified as being off task an average of 1.9 times more than the rest of the class. A program that incorporated the dominant learning styles of students in the target group with…

The question of what schools should do about individual differences among learners is discussed with reference to the cognitive theories of Piaget. Historically, teachers were not expected to adjust to individual differences; the child who could not adapt was at fault. Around the turn of the present century, educators began to turn their attention…

One aspect of a nationwide survey dealt with the extent to which the attribution theory might be used to help account for students' perceptions of their successes and failures at employer sites. The study involved 1,102 high school students enrolled in 18 experience-based career education programs in 16 states. Respondents indicated the degree to…

Reading encompasses a wide range of verbal processes, among them such simple verbal processes as word decoding, letter recognition, name retrieval, and semantic access. The question is whether simple verbal processing differences are adequate to account for general reading ability differences. Across different verbal domains and different ages,…

This report provides an overview of eight experiments on covariation judgment training. Included are a literature review, rationale, and description of the rule-analytic approach used in all experiments. Experiment 1 identified undergraduates' understandings of rule use, finding self-report a poor method for diagnosing sources of error. Experiment…

Recent literature on individual differences in verbal ability indicates that people demonstrating high verbal comprehension are quicker and more accurate in identifying lexical items, as well as more rapid in parsing sentences. They are not, however, more sensitive to the general gist of a passage, and thus do not respond to priming from context…

The factors that influence students' educational aspirations are of critical importance to both teachers and policy makers. To determine how grade eight students in Toronto make the decision whether or not to attend college, 120 inner-city eighth graders and some of their parents, teachers and principals were interviewed. In the second stage of…

Reported are four studies of the development of moral autonomy among 720 individuals ranging in age from 12 to 21 years. A questionnaire and a focused interview technique were used to find indications of autonomy in moral judgments and the justifications for these judgments. Tasks elicited moral decisions in the areas of child rearing, schools,…

This study compares the school experiences and beliefs about school of academically at-risk and successful students in a culturally diverse urban middle grade school. Information was analyzed from a survey of a random sample of 110 students, comprised of 48 at-risk students, 43 good/average students, and 36 honor roll students, and intensive…