An exploratory study examined the relationship between adolescents' stance ("monologic" versus "dialogic") and several issues, including the degree to which adolescents explore tensions and contradictions in their writing and the nature of such tensions as related to gender and/or school attitudes. For the purposes of the…

Measurements of formal reasoning and principled moral reasoning ability were obtained from a sample of 99 tenth grade students. Specific modes of formal reasoning (proportional reasoning, controlling variables, probabilistic, correlational and combinatorial reasoning) were first examined. Findings support the notion of hierarchical relationships…

Differences in social-psychological environments between parochial and public schools, and between mathematics and English courses, were investigated involving 317 grade 10 boys and girls. Multivariate and univariate analysis of variance produced significant main effects and School x Subject interaction. Differential validities of environment…

The historical change in educational status projections of Georgia rural youth was examined from 1966-1972. Used as the sampling unit, counties were: (1) rural, (2) characterized by low socioeconomic status, and (3) representative of all state regions. All schools in each county with a 10th grade class were used, although not necessarily the same…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of scaffolding in helping students understand a complex problem. Seventy-nine 10th-grade students (15 to 16 years old) from an urban public school participated in this study. The ethnic breakdown of the students at this school was: 39.4% White, 18% Black, 22.4% Hispanic, and 20.3 %…

Kentucky's goal of reaching academic "proficiency" by 2014 illuminated problematic findings in 2002 reading test scores: 44.30% of middle and 71.25% of high school students scored below "proficient." The research question was, "Do teaching practices in schools with high reading achievement scores differ from teaching practices in schools with low…

This paper will discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding a particular Ohio Department of Education tenth grade lesson plan titled "Critical Analysis of Evolution" (Ohio Department of Education identification L10H23). The lesson professes to encourage students to "critically examine" evidences for and against evolution and…

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the ideas and beliefs of high school science students (n=37) about the processes of observation in their learning of science, and how these students approached the task of observing during their science experiments. Findings include: many students saw observation as a teacher-directed process;…

This study explores the relationship between mathematics and English achievement and mathematics and verbal self-concept and investigates whether these relationships are invariant with respect to student ability and gender. Data from 16,033 10th grade students who completed both the base and the first follow-up student questionnaire of the…

This study investigates and compares American and Chinese secondary students' science achievement, their attitudes toward science, and other factors influencing science learning. The subjects, in Grades 7-12, include Chinese students (N=495) and American students (N=469). A survey of attitudes towards science developed by the authors was employed…

A description is given of the development and implementation of the BLOCK Schedule Program, which provides an alternative format to the traditional high school schedule and has a time frame similar to that of a summer school schedule. The target population was high risk students at the sophomore and junior levels. Students attend BLOCK classes for…

A study investigated the ability of above average and average high school students to use text structure to identify main ideas and write a summary. Schema possession of 388 sophomores was assessed by measuring their ability to organize the components of a scrambled passage. Only 10 students in the above average and 20 in the average ability…

This investigation was undertaken in order to establish the status of scientific literacy among three groups of secondary school students in four Brisbane, Australia high schools, and to reduce the apparent reticence of science teachers to evaluate students' achievement in the various dimensions of scientific literacy by demonstrating appropriate…

This paper discusses problems many tenth grade students have when asked to apply a familiar formula in an unfamiliar context: specifically factoring a compound expression. Some of their attempts at solution are presented and discussed in terms of structure sense. (Contains 1 table.) [For complete proceedings, see ED496848.]

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of students' learning styles on their chemistry achievement and attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject. One hundred seventy nine 9th grade and 151 10th grade students taking chemistry courses from different high schools were enrolled in the study. The Learning Style Inventory was used to…