This study examined the effectiveness of two factors in second language vocabulary teaching: (1) presence or absence of a text; and (2) use of a variety of explanation types. The study's context was three 9th grade and one 10th grade class of English-as-a-Second-Language students in Hong Kong. All classes were taught by different teachers. Their…

An ethnographic study assessed the family constellations of ninth graders in an urban public school through cluster analysis. Survey data were collected from a random sample of 120 high school freshmen and were used to compute 4 variables for each student: (1) presence of the mother in the home; (2) presence of the father in the home; (3) presence…

Researchers have noticed a gap between mathematics practice in school and mathematics practice in out-of-school situations. This study compares the out-of-school practice involving measurement of on-the-job carpet layers with the problem-solving strategies of ninth-grade students while engaged in measurement problems from the typical mathematics…

A study examined whether junior high remedial reading students could be trained to use a prewriting schema development strategy called "story impressions" to develop schema and engage the reader in active reading of the text in order to improve comprehension of narrative material. Subjects were four classes of seventh, eighth, and ninth…

It was hypothesized that antisocial behavior and deviant peer involvement assessed prior to puberty, at grade four, would predict initiation of sexual intercourse by grade nine. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 201 boys who were at risk for delinquency. The subjects participated in an extensive multiple method/agent assessment for both…

The effects of cognitive and behavioral orienting activities and practice on student learning of cued and uncued information were examined in this study. The subjects were 54 grade 9 students (28 males and 26 females), who were classified as high or low ability based on the verbal intelligence estimate of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. These…

Findings of a 1989 research study on LOGO-based instruction for teaching abstract concepts of geometry are reported in an effort to encourage mathematics teachers to use the LOGO language in computer-assisted instruction. Thirty-three ninth graders (19 males and 14 females) (6 white students and 27 black students) were involved in the controlled…

A study explored a number of variables related to the health decision making of 43 ninth grade students from Montana and New York. Students filled out a questionnaire which had them first read a short drinking and driving scenario and then answer questions which asked them to: (1) make a decision; (2) report how long they would take to make their…

Black students, other minorities and white students can show significant increases in achievement in biology by using a cooperative learning model. Concentrating on cooperating with group members toward a common goal is the ingredient that makes this cooperative learning model work. This study was designed to investigate the effects of cooperative…

The findings of this study support the position that well designed and implemented concept lessons are more effective in facilitating concept acquisition and retention than the conventional means of teaching concepts presented in social studies textbooks. Participating in the study were 147 students randomly assigned to a two-day treatment…

This paper deals with the question of how teacher attitudes emerge as teacher behaviors and the relationships between teacher attitudes toward mathematics, teaching, and students, and teacher behaviors as measured by external observers and pupils. Forty-nine ninth-grade mathematics teachers were the subject of this research. It was observed that…

This investigation analyzed sex-related and age-related differences on spatial visualization tasks, reasoning tasks, and mathematical problem-solving tasks; and the effects instruction in visual thinking would have on these differences. Students in fifth grade, ninth grade, and in college, were tested before and after twelve weeks of instruction…

Results of a study using a theoretical model to measure student attitudes toward social studies are reported. Attitudes were measured as they related to five constructs: (1) teacher attitudes, including support and reinforcement for the student and enthusiasm for subject; (2) student self-concept, scholastic attitude, peer acceptance, and…

A total of 199 students from a school in Hong Kong responded to 25 items in a survey. Principal components analysis found four school motivation factors consistent with the Task, Effort, Competition and Praise scales of the McInerney, et al. (1997) Inventory of School Motivation, one education aspiration factor and one career aspiration factor.…

The assertion that "higher order" thinking skills can be improved by learning to program computers is not a new one. The idea endures even though the empirical evidence over the years has been mixed at best. In fact, there is no reason to expect that all programming courses will have identical, or even similar, effects. Such courses typically…