Books of the Month

Elmer L. Struening and Marcia Guttentag (eds.) Handbook of Evaluation Research (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1975—$50.00, two volumes or $25.00 each).

Arthur S.Banks (ed.) Political Handbook of the World: 1976 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976—$19.95)     

Cognitive learning & personal development: A false dichotomy

If cognitive learning and personal development are indeed intertwined as experts suggest, then why does higher education persist in keeping them separate? Here are some ideas on how to bring them together.     

The Relation of Knowledge-Text Integration Processes and Reading Comprehension in 7th- to 12th-Grade Students

The integration of knowledge during reading was tested in 1,109 secondary school students. Reading times for the second sentence in a pair (Jane’s headache went away) were compared in conditions where the first sentence was either causally or temporally related to the first sentence (Jane took an aspirin vs. Jane looked for an aspirin). Mixed-effects explanatory item response models revealed that at higher comprehension levels, sentences were read more quickly in the causal condition. There were no condition-related reading time differences at lower comprehension levels. This interaction held with comprehension- and inference-related factors (working memory, word and world knowledge, and word reading efficiency) in the models. Less skilled comprehenders have difficulty in knowledge-text integration processes that facilitate sentence processing during reading.     

Learning and gender: Complexity and possibility

Severiens and Ten Dam's efforts to link theories of learning and gender are applauded as a valuable step forward in understanding learning. Complexities of the relationships among epistemic structures, patterns within structures, and learning activities are highlighted as are dilemmas in assessing these multiple layers of learning.