Study examines interaction between ninth-grade readers' (N=72) social desirability concerns and comprehension of text that does or does not violate social values. Results reveal that comprehension scores increased with reading level, and were lower on paragraphs that violated social values. Students with higher social desirability concerns had…

Addresses the role of multiple goals, both mastery and performance goals, and links them to multiple outcomes of motivation, affect, strategy use, and performance. Data from 8th and 9th graders (N=150) reveal that, in line with normative goal therapy, mastery goals were adaptive; but also that performance goals, when coupled with mastery goals,…

Discusses the problems, methodology, and positive results of an 8-week course in cultural literacy for 34 ninth grade students at Brooklyn's John Dewey High School. Provides sample materials in 4 appendixes. (NH)

Discusses research on successful support programs for potential dropouts. Describes a Detroit high school's Ninth Grade Project 96 program, an intervention strategy for high-risk, low-achieving students. The program used a modified block schedule; attendance, academic, and monitoring interventions; incentives and rewards; and team teachers.…

Researchers examined the degree to which the teacher, past academic success, and student's sex influenced the self-concepts of ninth and tenth grade geometry students. Teacher influence and past academic success exerted more impact on geometry students' self-concepts than did their sex. (Author/PP)

Explores how learning environment dimensions are related to on-task-orientation, and how these relations are mediated by students' perceptions of the meaningfulness of schoolwork. For school psychologists, results seem to imply an increased focus on the learning environment, and particularly on the importance of the social emotional dimensions for…

Eighth- and ninth-grade students underwent several forms of preparation before taking a mathematics achievement test: (1) going over practice problems (of the nature covered by the test); (2) review sessions; and (3) lecture and discussion on the importance of the test. Test preparation significantly affected mathematics achievement test…

Illustrates the importance of carefully interpreting reading test results. (JT)

This study investigated the relationships among vocational, moral, and social development in ninth- and twelfth-grade students to clarify the psychological and psychosocial nature of vocational maturity. The effects of age differences and sex differences are discussed. (PP)

Ninth grade remedial readers at a suburban Chicago high school were given a language development program which included reading while listening to tapes and lessons in syntactic manipulation. Analysis of program effects showed that students improved their ability to understand and manipulate syntactic structures. Reading did not improve markedly.…

Researchers have concluded that the continued debate over the heredity-environment issue concerning the nature of intelligence is nonproductive. Recent evidence demonstrates that intellectual abilities can be improved with practice. Heredity may determine upper limits of abilities within individuals, but there is considerable room left for…

The handling of mistakes in the mathematics classroom is an area in which only little research is done so far. In mathematics education there are, in fact, several investigations about students' mistakes from a diagnostic perspective, but hardly any studies on the question how teachers react in concrete mathematics lessons. In this article…

This paper synthesizes research on the value of writing in learning science at all grade levels. Breakthroughs and barriers to the effective use of writing to learn science are discussed. Differences between elementary and secondary teachers are considered with regard to background in language arts, understanding of the writing process, and the…

The inclusion of more sociology related materials in the 8th and 9th grade civics curriculum can push the margins of civics education to a more broadly conceived notion of citizenry and make civics and sociology more relevant to students' lives. The goal should be to help students understand society, not the discipline of sociology. Sociology…

This research study examined the effect that a ninth grade introduction to the social studies course had upon student interest in the social studies. A group of 32 entering ninth grade students (20 boys and 12 girls) were chosen as the experimental group to take the course. Written in a series of units, the course was comprised of the disciplines…