The purpose of this study was to describe how one primary teacher of poor and working class rural students promoted small-group dialogue about books and literary concepts. Specifically, we focused on how she guided the students from the beginning of a lesson in ways that later led to dialogue during a videotaped four-day lesson sequence. We…

Many of the most talented authors and artists of the past and present have shared their thoughts and their gifts with young children through picture books. Many picture books allow young children to explore important ideas and to stretch their minds far beyond rote memorization. Young children absorb knowledge at a very rapid pace. In an age of…

In this study we test the performance of some nonexperimental estimators of impacts applied to an educational intervention--reduction in class size--where achievement test scores were the outcome. We compare the nonexperimental estimates of the impacts to "true impact" estimates provided by a random-assignment design used to assess the…

The focus of this study will be on the intersection of the following domains: Second Language Acquisition research on cohesion and coherence, discourse acquisition of young children, the effect of text form-focused instruction on student non-fiction writing and the impact of schema theory on student decision-making during the writing process.

The influence of location as exemplified by neighbourhood factors and school characteristics on primary education is examined in the context of the school choice movement of the last two decades. The analysis incorporates statistical information about schools and population data from Census 2000 describing neighbourhoods and schools in one…

The purpose of this yearlong study was to understand the complexities of the writing process and to specifically attend to progressions in textual development with first-grade writers. The inquiry focused for a macroview on all the children during writing workshop and for a microview on six case studies that displayed the range of literacy…

Research that bears on the issue of school entry policies is summarized in this report. The focus is on the age children should be to enter kindergarten and the potential benefits of delaying school entry for all or some children. The research reviewed uses three methodologies: (1) comparing outcomes for children who have delayed entry by a year…

In 2005 the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to gather evidence on local authority (LA) and school approaches to nutrition in schools in order to inform the work of the WLGA Schools Food Task and Finish Group. This report presents the findings of that research.…

This study examined teacher empowerment through the development of individual and collective teacher efficacy. A content-centered staff development program implemented in a Michigan school district by the New Zealand Ministry of Education and Oakland University helped teachers develop efficacy in the teaching of mathematics and in the ability to…