The use of information technology in the academic environment has grown. Building different didactic techniques to help students learn and practice with Information Technology (IT) resources is common. However, applying these techniques does not necessarily mean that students may acquire knowledge. The differential idea of this work is to create…

Addressing a serious, long-term educational problem in Brazil, this study aimed at identifying teachers' opinions about students' failure at school and the factors related to such failure in order to understand what such opinions mean in terms of teachers' perceptions of their role. Subjects were 451 public school elementary school teachers from…

The purpose of this study was to identify teachers' expectations of schooling and their causal attributions regarding the academic performance of their students. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire administered to 451 elementary school teachers. Analyses led to the following conclusions: (1) teachers hold high expectations of schooling…

This investigation was designed (l) to assess to what causal factors Brazilian elementary students attribute their success or failure in achievement tasks; (2) to verify whether their attributions can be classified into the categories proposed by Weiner (1972): ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck; and (3) to assess the relationship between…

Investigates the relationship between maturity of moral judgement and perception of maternal and peer attitudes in Brazilian sixth- and seventh-grade boys. (CM)

Interviews with fifth graders living in rural and urban parts of the Brazilian Amazon region revealed that children were aware of environmental problems, believed that throwing garbage into the Rio Negro harmed the environment and violated a moral obligation, cared about environmental harm, and supported conservation of the Amazon rain forest. (BC)

Researchers investigated the causal attributions for health and illness among 96 Brazilian elementary school students. Subjects were interviewed individually and their causal attributions were assessed through 14 true-false items (e.g. people stay well because they are lucky). The findings suggest that there may be more cross-cultural similarities…

This study analyzed aspects of a knowledge base for teaching and ways that teachers understood and described the required student knowledge base, highlighting the construction of a knowledge base for elementary teaching. Participants were elementary teachers and staff from one Brazilian elementary school. Teachers wrote reports on what they…

This research assessed the impact of the experience of academic success and failure on the causal attribution patterns of low income Brazilian elementary school students. The sample consisted of 147 first, third, and fifth graders, previously classified as success or failure students. Causal attribution was measured through individual interviews…

Describes a university/school collaboration that helped tailor a curriculum for gifted Brazilian elementary students. Analyzes stumbling blocks, discusses circumstances favoring the emergence of collaboration, and notes benefits (fuller integration of theory and practice in education and establishment of a policy to provide for differences in…

School failure in elementary school students from low income families has been a serious problem in Brazilian public schools for many years. A number of studies were implemented in an effort to reduce the incidence of school failure. One set of studies focusing on teachers' causal perceptions revealed a combination of socio-economic determinism…

Measured physical and cognitive development of 7- to 10-year-old Brazilian children in 3 social groups. Domestic servants' children were taller and heavier than children in slums, and shorter than middle-class children. Domestic servants' sons scored similar to slum-dwelling boys on cognitive measures. (BC)

The evolution of creative thought was examined, an examination that resulted in the construction of universal criteria for analysis and detailed evidence for the evolution of novelty, i.e. how children create knowledge. The collected data came from 200 students from the United States and 200 from Brazil. Each of the 10 age groups (from 4 to 13…