A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that metaphorical thought develops according to the principles governing other categorizing processes. Of particular interest were the questions of whether preschool children possess the categorical flexibility to comprehend metaphorical statements and, if they do, whether this flexibility manifests…

Causal attribution has been found to have a great effect on future performance. Causal attributions were studied across two academic subjects and two outcomes using an open-ended measure. All 180 ninth-graders in a girls' high school in the Bay Area of San Francisco (California) stated their best and worst subjects and provided their perceived…

Four item bias methods were studied. The methods compared include the Mantel-Haenszel statistic, the plot method, the route mean squared difference method, and the total area method; the latter two methods are based on item response theory. The test consisted of item responses of 451 male and 486 female ninth graders to 75 test items on the 1985…

The management problems of the implementation process of an Individualized Audio-Tutorial (IAT) learning unit in ninth grade biology in Israel are discussed. The sequence of the learning activities in relation to four problems which were raised during the implementation process are presented: (1) administrative problems at the school level; (2)…

Relationships between student affective and cognitive learning outcomes and their perceptions of classroom environment as measured by the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) were investigated for a sample of 1,083 students in 116 science classrooms. It was found that CES scales displayed satisfactory internal consistency and discriminant validity,…

The Halliday and Hasan (1976) method of categorizing semantic units was used to analyze the cohesive strategies used by secondary students learning English as a second language. The method involves classifying and charting the network of semantic relationships, the types of cohesive devices, and the number of breaks in the flow of a text or…

This study used 152 grade eight students ranging in age from 12 to 14 years from a suburban middle school in central New Jersey. The investigations gave particular attention to the identification of variables that represent understanding of fundamental mathematical structures. The first year of the research took place during the 1978-1979 school…

The purpose of the study was to find out if and how the subject matter of a remedial high school classroom interacted with the social organization of that classroom and the differences it made. Two classrooms with different subject matter (mathematics and social studies) were observed over the course of a school year. The multiple awarenesses and…

This paper discusses a study of learning retention among junior high school students involved in a field trip in a geography course. The study was based on a model of memory proposed by Robert Gagne and R.T. White. This model of cognitive processes, postulated on the belief that recall of any element is a function of its degree of interlinking in…

The relative effectiveness of three plans for implementing group learning centers in home economics classes was compared. Plans varied in assignment of group activities--a student group either completed all activities in a course unit, or completed some, and reported what they had learned to the rest of the class. Participants were 251 eighth and…

This study explored 22 ninth-grade English students' reading engagement and interpretation of a young adult multicultural novel dealing with biethnic identity development. The descriptive multicase study charted students' literary engagement in an urban technology magnet school and a rural Hawaii high school. The research question was: What are…

This study examined how sociomoral judgments and other evaluations of aggression related to potentially aggressogenic social-cognitive factors and patterns of conduct problem behaviors. Participating were 124 ninth graders in the seventh, eighth, or ninth year of a developmental research project on social competence. Subjects were assessed across…

Disturbed by inequities created by tracking, many schools have attempted to "detrack" by consciously organizing students into academically heterogeneous classrooms. This paper, based on a year-long interpretive study of a detracked ninth grade English-History "core" program at a diverse urban high school, focuses on the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between students' conceptions of the nature of science and their reactions to evidence that challenged their beliefs about socio-scientific issues. The study used 248 students from 9th and 10th grade general science classes, 11th and 12th grade honors biology, honors science, and…

The relationships among identity, school engagement, and goal attainment for African American adolescents in urban public high schools were studied with 63 ninth graders. In bi-weekly workshops, information was obtained about student dreams and goals, self-concepts, and knowledge of what they needed to do to attain their goals. To explore…