How people see the world, even how they research it, is influenced by beliefs. Some beliefs are conscious and the result of research, or at least amenable to research. Others are largely invisible. They may feel like "common knowledge" (though myth, not knowledge), unrecognized premises that are part of the surrounding culture. As we…

The Utah state legislature established the Early Intervention Software Program ("EISP") to aid in the development of Utah students' literacy skills through computer-based, adaptive reading software programs designed to meet students' unique learning needs. The Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI) conducts an annual evaluation of how…

This brief is directed to researchers and adds to the research base about instructional practices that are related to student achievement. Additional evidence on these relationships can suggest specific hypotheses for the future study of such instructional practices, which, in turn, will provide research evidence that could inform professional…

This study investigated the accuracy of classroom teachers' judgments of the reading progress of their low-performing students. Participants were 36 second grade teachers and students in their lowest reading groups (n = 150). Student progress was monitored weekly using reading-curriculum-based measurement (R-CBM) procedures. After 6 weeks,…

In this Appendix, we provide details about the data used for the current study, the curricula used in the classrooms from which data were collected, and the current study's methodological approach. (Contains 14 tables and 5 footnotes.)[For full report, see ED544189.]

The present study examines private speech and strategy-use patterns for solving simple number fact problems in addition. The progressive differentiation by grade between children's levels of private speech internalization--including silence--was investigated and related to children's developmental patterns for subcategories of strategy-use…

Effects of dramatic play on children's narrative competence were investigated among 36 second-graders. Children were read a familiar folktale and then "played" the story, discussed it, or drew a picture about it. They were then asked to retell the story either to an informed or to a naive listener. It was hypothesized that (1) more…

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the remediation of negative emotion will be most effective when the remedial procedure matches the experience or cognition that induced the negative state. Other hypotheses examined were (1) that negative states induced by cognitive reflection related to the self would be resistant to…

A study was conducted to explore how second-grade children's memory for film characters' statements varies as a function of (1) group composition (the proportion of boys and girls in each film condition); (2) congruence level of film characters (incongruent and congruent sex-typed statements); and (3) subjects' own sex-role orientations…

Investigates children's ability to distinguish the literal meaning of a message and a speaker's communicative intent. Either knowing or not knowing the speaker's intended referent, first- and second-grade children evaluated brief referential communication messages for ambiguity. In the first experiment, messages were written on cards and read to…

First and second graders were exposed to a memory task in which their recall performance varied as a function of their incidentally elicited sorting behavior. When asked what had affected their recall, only some children at each grade identified sorting as a causal factor. Causal attributions predicted use of sorting strategy in a standard…

Examines the role of modeling and social reciprocity in the regulation of young boys' aggressive actions. Tested in pairs, 100 first- and second-grade students were assigned to five experimental conditions differing in whether one or both boys saw a film depicting aggression directed toward persons or toward inanimate objects. (RH)

Explores children's judgments of the relative effectiveness of four memory strategies (looking, naming, rehearsing, and categorizing.) Strategy judgment data were analyzed using Thurstone's Method of Paired Comparisons. (Author/NH)

Developmental changes leading to mature judgments of the relative effectiveness of verbal memory strategies were examined in 60 subjects (20 each from second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade classrooms). Subjects viewed videotapes of a female child who was given the task of remembering a set of categorizable pictures. Demonstrations of four memory…

Tests second- and sixth-grade students' incidental memory for words under acoustic- and semantic-processing conditions. The findings were predicted by an associative-processing account of incidental memory previously advanced by Ghatala (1981) and indicate that both knowledge-base development and processing activity determine children's incidental…