The current study followed literacy skills development amongst 79 Arabic native speaking pupils from kindergarten to fourth grade. Based on reading comprehension attainments in fourth grade, two groups of skilled and poor readers were identified. Poor readers showed significantly lower performance on measures of phonological and morphological…

The primary goal of this project is to assess the students' better communication attainment after applying a series of five interactive strategies to an experiment group of subjects. This class will be compared with a control group of other participants, and in their class, the interactive approaches are not emphasized and practiced openly. The…

The introduction of a listening comprehension component in the Israeli Matriculation examination of English as a Foreign Language has necessitated research into more effective methods of testing listening comprehension. Oral proficiency has been part of the examination for some time, but more reliable methods of evaluating the test are needed. An…

Accuracy and determination of feeling of knowing (FOK) were studied in 3 experiments involving 78 Israeli undergraduates using a unified model of FOK. Results challenge the view that FOK is based on a direct, privileged access to an internal monitor. (SLD)

The purpose of this study was to determine how children at different ages understand the concept of temperature, examining particularly the logicomathematical aspects of the concept. In doing so, three developmental approaches were compared: (1) Piaget's structuralist approach; (2) Siegler's rule assessment approach; and (3) Anderson and…

Items in the verbal (Hebrew and English) sections of the Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) administered for university admission in Israel were studied for differential item functioning (DIF) between the sexes. Analyses were conducted for 4,354 males and 4,901 females taking Form 3 of the PET in April 1984, and 3,786 males and 3,815 females taking…

This paper further develops an instructional method called here "process-object linking and embedding". The idea is to link the familiar mathematical processes to objects in a familiar situation, then re-embed the new link through mathematical symbols into their mathematical construction. It makes use of children's extra-mathematical,…

A study investigated the effectiveness of the Success for All (SFA) program developed at Johns Hopkins University. The program emphasizes prevention of failure, personal tutoring, family-school program, and regular evaluation of student progress. In 1996, the program involved schools in northern Israel--Arabic and Jewish, religious and secular.…

The effects of specific guidelines in the taking and rating of tests of language summarizing ability were investigated, as well as interrater agreement regarding the rating of specific ideas within the summaries. The tests involved respondents reading source texts and providing written summaries as a measure of their reading comprehension and…

A study conducted in Israel investigated the relevance of subject-specific reading passages to performance on reading comprehension tests for advanced university students of English as a second language. The research specifically examined (1) whether students performed better when the reading test content was directly related to their field of…

In 1997, the English Department of the School of Education at Israel's Achva Academic College opened its preservice teacher education program. In 1998, 15 students of the department responded to a call from the chairperson of the English department to tutor students who needed help to succeed in the English matriculation exams. This paper explains…

The development of a model for criterion-referenced mastery reading comprehension tests for university courses in English as a Second Language (ESL) is designed. In the process of developing this model, two major issues were addressed: clarification of the concept of "criteria" within criterion-referenced testing and choice of the…

Understanding the current conflicts and political changes in the Middle East us important for American educators if American students are to understand the dynamics of the region. To discuss these issues, FPRI held its 12th History Institute for Teachers on October 16-17, 2004. Forty teachers from 15 states attended the weekend program at the…

This comparison of students' learning from reading books and from watching television uses Gavriel Salomon's model of learning effects, which is based on the amount of mental effort invested (AIME) in a medium as determining how deeply the information from that medium is processed. Mental effort, in turn, is predicted to depend on two perceptions…