Employing a new procedure for measuring peer concepts, this study investigated the development of differentiation and accuracy of children's concepts of their peers' attributes. Subjects, 18 second-graders, 23 fourth-graders, and 18 sixth-graders, were asked to rate characteristics of their peers in mathematics, athletics (running), and in two…

To support the construct validity of a locally developed, sixth grade reading achievement test, an investigation of factorial invariance was made across 1556 majority, 327 Black minority, and 136 Asian minority examinees. Although the hypothesis of a unidimensional factor pattern was retained for each group, hypotheses of equal factor weights…

The links between sixth-grade reading achievement, race, and the socioeconomic status of schools and neighborhoods in the Kansas City School District (KCSD) from the 1950s to the present were examined. The data show that black students tended, as early as 1956, to be in poverty schools with low achievement and that this pattern has persisted. In…

A follow-up study built on a 1980 study which compared the self-concept of 86 rural Appalachian sixth graders with 80 urban non-Appalacian sixth graders using the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale; then the rural Appalachian sample scored significantly lower in general self-concept and on four self-concept clusters. Where the original…

This is a report on a study of racial interrelationships among students in desegregated schools. Sociometric measures of third graders' willingness to play and work with their classmates (indicating cross-race acceptance) showed evidence of racial bias; however, the amount of bias appeared small compared to the findings of earlier studies which…

All sixth class pupils in 93 Irish primary schools were rated by their teachers as either having or not having problems related to literacy (in reading or writing). Teachers perceived 6.2% of pupils as being unable to cope with everyday demands in reading, while 6.6% were perceived as unable to cope with everyday demands in writing. A further 7%…

This study investigated children's preference and comprehension responses to stories in which both male and female main characters were represented in traditional and nontraditional roles, and stories in which only the opposite sex main characters were portrayed in those roles. A total of 218 girls and 169 boys from grades five and six (all with…

Central to the process of reading comprehension is the use of questions and discussions in the classroom in order to direct and to evaluate a student's level of understanding of the materials read. Researchers estimate that approximately 70% of teaching involves the technique of questioning students. It is important that teachers do more than ask…

The general purposes of this study were to investigate the factorial validity of the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS), Reading Comprehension subtest, and to study the item difficulties in order to determine areas of strengths and weaknesses of sixth and seventh grade Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I students. A sample of…

The development of an Attitude-Behavior Scale through an application of Guttman-Jordan facet design is detailed. The attitude scale was constructed to meet the need in law-related education for a valid attitudinal instrument to be used in research settings and in attitude change situations. A legal education program was used as a treatment in a…

Metacognition refers to an individual's knowledge concerning his/her own cognitive processes. Children's metacognitive strategies were examined in a study predicated upon R.J. Spiro's hypothesis that subjects tend to reproduce (literally recall) text information in formal situations and to reconstruct (inferentially recall) it in informal…

Forty-eight sixth-grade students were studied to determine their response to selected compressions of the narration of an instructional sound motion picture. A 4:10 color film with a 158 wpm recorded narration was shown at 25, 33-1/3 and 50 percent compression rates; performance time and quality were measured immediately and after 12-day…

In the present research we examined variations in the after-school experience of young adolescents as a function of family background characteristics and the extent to which after-school activities were associated with behavioral adjustment at school. After-school time use was assessed through telephone interviews with 438 young adolescents…

Year-to-year rater variation may result in constructed response (CR) parameter changes, making CR items inappropriate to use in anchor sets for linking or equating. This study demonstrates how rater severity affected the writing and reading scores. Rater adjustments were made to statewide results using an item response theory (IRT) methodology…

With consistently low levels of academic performance and high rates of absenteeism (Bourke & Rigby, 2000), the students in this study are the most educationally disadvantaged group in Australia with respect to mathematics. This paper reports on a study undertaken with Years 5-7 students in a Queensland aboriginal community to determine their…