In recent years, arguments have been advanced from a number of theoretical perspectives in social science that the modern state faces a crisis of legitimacy in its relationship to its society and its citizens. Much governmental behavior in the area of educational policy can be interpreted as a strategy of "compensatory…

Examines whether or not communication strategies (CS) can be taught and suggests reasons for the controversy surrounding the teachability of CS. Also reports on a study of CS training with Hungarian secondary students, the results of which suggest that quantity and quality of learners' use of CS does improve with focused instruction. (Contains 62…

Early adolescents may lack the cognitive and metacognitive skills necessary for effective inquiry learning. In particular, they are likely to have a nonnormative mental model of multivariable causality in which effects of individual variables are neither additive nor consistent. Described here is a software-based intervention designed to…

This document examines how a unit on model rockets, designed to be a "hands-on" activity within the "Mission to Mars" curriculum that was implemented in the Nashville (Tennessee) area middle schools, has been used to investigate children's understanding of experimentation. A literature review explores some of the traditional…

The report describes an 18-month research project at Chanute Air Force Base, Illinois, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of inceptive motivation techniques in Air Force technical training. The first phase of the research identified incentives. The findings were used in the second phase of the research which made these incentives contingent on…

This conference on physics education was held to improve cooperative efforts in connection with 12 topics previously identified by a survey. A working group was organized in association with each of these topics with the hope of creating or reinforcing a network. Working groups included: network development procedures; graduate education and…

Data collection from 25 school districts throughout Pakistan and subsequent educational experiments in selected villages highlight 1976-77 research to identify causes of primary school dropout and to suggest primary education improvements to benefit Pakistan's rural poor, especially women. In the 416 villages studied only 1/3 of the total primary…

Despite rising sentiment, the decision to "de-school" society seems premature unless it derives from a comparative empirical assessment of school and nonschool educational programs' relative contributions to national goals. One of many new alternative systems, Kenya's village polytechnics (low-cost primary training centers in rural…

In Dubai, traffic accidents kill one person every 37 hours and injure one person every 3 hours. Novice traffic accident investigators in the Dubai police force are expected to "learn by doing" in this intense environment. Currently, they use no alternative to the real world in order to practice. This paper argues for the use of an…

There is widespread concern for the situation of school physics regarding recruitment, contents, teaching methods, etc. In this study based on questionnaire and focus group data, we explore how upper secondary pupils and teachers perceive physics as a subject, how they experience physics instruction, and how physics compares to other subjects. Our…

This paper reports a study of the effects of a collaborative inquiry approach to science on language minority students' (middle and high school) learning. This approach emphasizes involving the students, most of whom have had very little schooling, in "doing science" in ways that scientists practice. This study addresses the question: To…

An experiment in inservice training for language teachers is described. The experiment consists of using radio, television, written materials, or tapes to introduce topics in applied linguistics that are relevant to second language teaching methods. The object of the experiment is to determine whether this method, in which the instructor and the…

A program designed to provide students with a fairly good command of English, including some knowledge of scientific and technical English, upon completing the five year middle school is discussed. The five year period is divided into three stages. In the first stage, first and second year students receive training in listening comprehension,…

Presents results of a study that examines the development and use of computer simulations for high school science instruction and for integrated laboratory and computerized tests that are part of the biology matriculation examination in Israel. Eleven implications for teaching are presented. (MDH)

Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of computer-assisted prosody training, its generalization to novel sentences and segmental accuracy, and the relationship between prosodic and lexical information in long-term memory. Experiment 1, using a pretest-posttest design, provided native English-speaking learners of French with 3 weeks of…