The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the percentage of expenditure on public education of a country and the effect that each percentage mark has on the economic growth, and therefore Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. The goal of this paper is to explore how investment in education impacts the economic growth of…

Mathematics education seen both as a field of research and as a field of practice is a multicultural field. For a while, this essential characteristic of the field has been underestimated but this is no longer the case. Both theoretical frameworks and empirical research help us today better approach this phenomenon, understand its impact on the…

Leadership has been considered a personality trait, some specific type of behavior to be learned, or the result of a combination of circumstances. As a special instance of leadership, management style has suffered the same definitional problems, but lately it has been considered a complex phenomenon, with three basic elements: the leader, the…

Expectation theory, developed during the 1930s and 1940s, explains human behavior in terms of interaction between person and situation characteristics, as they are perceived by the individual. This study is centered on the expectations of Belgian and Brazilian undergraduates about their first professional job. Recent research about work…

The literature discussing professional practices of school psychology in South America is very meager. This study attempted to identify demographic characteristics of school psychologists in four South American countries, their typical responsibilities, significant problems, and threats that jeopardize the delivery of psychological services within…

In the past few years, the care and education dimensions of day care have occupied a prominent place in scientific and political debate in Brazil and internationally. This study used an ecological perspective to examine the interconnections surrounding the dimensions of early care and childhood education and the forces that promote or restrain…

This research forum addresses the question: what is the nature of the mathematical knowledge that is needed for secondary teaching? Six international contributors: (1) Australia (Kaye Stacey); (2) Brazil (Marcelo Borba); (3) Israel (Ruhama Even); (4) Norway (Bodil Kleve and Barbara Jaworski); (5) Taiwan (Fou-Lai Lin); and (6) USA (Helen Doerr)…

This study investigated how urban and rural children who lived along a major river in Brazil understand and value their relationship with the natural environment. Forty-four Brazilian children in fifth grade were interviewed, and background of the city and village they lived in was ascertained. Each child was individually administered a…

Two studies evaluated cross cultural perspectives of children's moral and ecological reasoning as well as values about nature. The first study was conducted in Houston, Texas, with an inner city black community. Subjects were 72 children from impoverished families. The results suggested that the serious constraints of living in an inner-city…

A study was conducted to examine the procedures and requirements of a formative evaluation when it is carried out for instructional materials that have been designed for a U.S. target audience, but which also have potential use by a population of another country, e.g., Brazil. The study concentrated on determining whether different formative…

The Tetreau-Trahan Visual Interest Test (TTVIT) was constructed to counteract the influence of verbal and cognitive factors in the measurement of vocational interests. Two forms were developed--a pictorial test based on color slides of various occupations, as well as a verbal form to be used in comparative studies with samples of persons from…

Elementary and secondary teachers in Brazil, Jordan, Venezuela, and the United States feel they have a fair amount of autonomy in running their own classrooms, somewhat less autonomy regarding certain miscellaneous job-related matters, and still less autonomy in matters affecting the operation of the school as an organization. The attitudes of a…

The evolution of creative thought was examined, an examination that resulted in the construction of universal criteria for analysis and detailed evidence for the evolution of novelty, i.e. how children create knowledge. The collected data came from 200 students from the United States and 200 from Brazil. Each of the 10 age groups (from 4 to 13…