Both historical and recent trends in science education and social studies education are reviewed. The impact of the back-to-basics movement in both science and social studies education is considered. (RD)

Reports the results of various studies conducted in Australia to determine national reading standards. (AEA)

Suggestions are made for using an understanding of child development to ensure fair and constructive competency testing in the first years of school. (JD)

This report discusses the place of numeracy in adult education, examines conceptions of what numeracy and numeracy provision might include, and explores links between literacy and numeracy provision. Section A takes a critical look at how much attention is being paid to mathematics education in adult education/adult literacy programs and addresses…

Society expects certain levels of literacy from its citizens. In addition, individuals have expectations for their own levels of literacy. In defining functional literacy, there is considerable disagreement over what can be expected of consumers, employees, and taxpayers. Empirical studies in Sweden attempting to establish criteria of functional…

This paper contains descriptions of documents setting forth the minimum communications skills competencies required for high school graduation in seven states: Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Utah. It then describes the procedures used to compile a synthesized list from those documents for use in a project to assess…

To answer the question of how phonemic awareness works to facilitate reading acquisition, this paper explores the fundamental connection between phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, and phonics in learning to read. The paper undertook a literature review to prove that phonemic awareness is an essential element in the path to literacy. It…

Recent trends in mathematics education, including instruction, curriculum, and defining the basic skills in mathematics are reviewed. Also reviewed is research addressed to whether mathematics achievement is declining. The authors conclude that computation remains a primary focus of curricula and that most teachers continue to teach as they were…

Outlines a basic writing skills course and provides statistics drawn from an existing course at San Diego State University concerning students' performance in the areas of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. (FL)

Written by the Australian Education Council, this article outlines the purpose and the procedures for the Australian Studies in Student Performance program, a project to gather information on achievement in literacy and numeracy of a sample of 10 and 14 year olds. (HTH)

Development of survey test materials for the Australian national testing program in literacy and math skills is discussed. (HTH)

This review of the research on the development and use of spoken pragmatic language skills by people with intellectual disabilities found that: this population does acquire basic pragmatic language skills; their communicative environments appear to inhibit the acquisition and display of pragmatic skills; different service settings affect pragmatic…

Defining literacy is a compelling challenge to educators. They generally use three models: instrumental, functional, and empowerment. The latter two approaches, which were increasingly evident in the 1980s, identify literacy by the social functions required in a given context or by the qualities needed for illiterate people to take control of…

A review of the literature regarding mastery learning suggests that mastery learning can benefit gifted education programs in two ways. First, the process provides information to determine if gifted students have mastered essential elements for a particular subject area, a necessary but often overlooked step before proceeding to enrichment.…

This paper is a summary of existing literature on the literacy requirements of various businesses and industries, including the Federal Government. The findings came from a spring 1979 search for literature on the literacy requirements of various businesses and industries during 1969-1979. The report contains information on the following topics:…