This document describes in depth a reading and writing project implemented at the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade levels at a public school in Portland, Oregon. The objectives of the Title I project--to improve students' reading and writing skills and to evaluate that improvement--are outlined, and each component of the program is described in…

The applicability of a recognized construct validation procedure, the nomological network, to a sixth-grade criterion-referenced mathematics test developed in a metropolitan school system was investigated. Two samples were tested. The first sample was used to investigate two hypotheses: items within each objective will constitute a Guttman scale,…

The effects of school characteristics upon achievement test scores in New York State were studied. Data, composed of the 1975-76 Consolidated Data Base and Finance Tapes for all 705 school districts in the state, were supplied by the New York State Department of Education. Among the 24 variables of interest were: state pupil evaluation tests of…

The relationships among tutor and pupil characteristics, tutorial processes, and learning outcomes in a peer tutorial program of spelling with sixth grade children were explored. Prior to tutoring, tutors and their pupils were tested for peer group status and liking of the tutorial partner. After twenty sessions of tutoring were completed,…

This paper describes an approach to mathematics teaching and learning using teacher-constructed "virtual" materials. In this approach, virtual copies of real materials are manipulated with mouse movements to replicate the traditional physical manipulation of real materials. The paper reports on three case studies where the approach was…

Two studies are reported that explore the effectiveness of instruction in promoting students' conceptual understanding of the average concept using a leveling model and an open-ended problem-solving approach. One teacher and her 46 sixth-grade students participated in the first study. One year later, the second study was conducted with the same…

Conceptual and methodological limitations have hampered researchers' ability to establish valid, substantively meaningful, and theoretically driven self-report assessments of peer susceptibility. As a result, many assessments of peer susceptibility have been conceptualized as unidimensional and void of any theoretical underpinnings. This study…

This research project represents phase 1 of a longitudinal study involving sixth graders in an English-as-a-Second-Language middle school classroom. Research activities focus on the development and implementation of portfolio management strategies for these students. It was believed that developing an efficient system to teach these students how…

A study examined changes in students' valuing of reading during middle childhood and early adolescence. The study evaluated reading teachers' instructional practices as well as students' achievement motivation. Subjects were 254 male students and 276 female students: 140 in third grade; 142 in fifth grade; and 248 in sixth grade. The sample of 54…

A study explored how small groups of student readers interacted in a classroom over time to interpret short stories assigned by a teacher who functioned as participant/observer. The study focused on multiple readers in actual classroom situations to consider the relationship between the social and academic elements observable during day-to-day…

This study assessed whether girls and boys write differently in their reader response journals for the classes of one sixth-grade teacher over 2 years. A literature-based reading program was used, and the students kept reader response journals. Journals from 9 girls and 11 boys from the first year and 8 girls and 8 boys from the second year were…

This study investigates the development of an adaptive strategy for estimating numerosity from the theoretical perspective of strategic change. A simple estimation task was used. Participants of 3 different age groups (20 university students, 20 sixth-graders and 10 second-graders) had to estimate 100 numerosities of colored blocks presented in a…

During the course of a large-scale study of teacher preparation for standardized tests in two low-stakes school districts, the question of whether the attitudes of teachers about standardized tests are a factor in their administration of mandated standardized tests in the classroom was addressed. Third-, fourth-, and sixth-grade teachers (n=178)…

Educators' perceptions of the effects of state mandated testing on instructional practices and curricular decisions were studied. An ethnographic interview study was conducted with 30 fifth- and sixth-grade teachers and 12 principals from Illinois, New York, and Tennessee. Forty-one of the 42 respondents agreed to have their interviews audiotaped.…

This paper describes a cooperative effort, part of a school/university partnership between the Graduate School of Education and the School of Information and Library Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in which a core curriculum was developed and coordinated in library research skills and information technology for two…