Education reforms throughout much of Canada reflect growing awareness of the role parents can play in an effective system. Though the relationship between parent involvement and student achievement is well established, how much time and money parents contribute to their children's education was largely unknown. To determine this for a sample of English-Canadian parents and to learn by comparison with a Japanese sample, 48 English-Canadian parents and 115 Japanese parents of children in grade 5 completed a survey on their contributions of time and money. They were also asked about their perceptions of the roles of home and school, aspirations for their children and motivations for spending their time and money in this way. While no significant differences were found in the total amount of money parents spent, there were many significant differences in how they spent it. Regarding time, English-Canadian parents spent more on almost every measure. Contrary to expectations, these findings raise many questions about previous research and prevailing attitudes regarding Japanese and English-Canadian parent involvement in education.

Conflict resolution skills are becoming an integral part of the Ontario elementary school curriculum. The provincial report card lists "Conflict Resolution" as one of nine Learning Skills. Unfortunately, the curricula typically used to teach conflict resolution skills do not include a means of assessing student competency. This study investigated the feasibility of an assessment instrument based on Selman's INS (interpersonal negotiation strategies) model (Selman, 1980) in a grade three classroom. The assessment instrument is in the form of a rubric. Data collection included: tape-recorded data and observation of students solving actual conflicts, an interview procedure, and a writing activity. The assessment instrument was found to be feasible for classroom use. The most viable form of data collection was the tape-recording of students solving actual conflicts. It is recommended that the rubric be refined by changing it from a chart with discrete cells, into a continuum of INS levels.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate a method of instruction that promotes problem solving skills. Critics of current educational practices say that present methods of instruction are not preparing students for the requirements of the work force. While skilled in textbook procedures, student graduates lack the expertise to solve the ill-defined problems they experience and will continue to experience in a changing economic world. Experts today say that the competitive world centres around problem solving, requiring innovative thinking and technological expertise. Skills needed to solve problems are taught in schools but in isolated "chunks" rather than being co-ordinated or integrated in an explicit problem solving approach. The implicit assumption is that students will use these skills in a problem solving context when needed. The question to be answered is, whether students would be more effective problem solvers if they were taught problem solving skills explicitly and systematically in a teaching environment which focusses on problem solving, rather than in a teaching environment which focusses on content. In a content oriented environment, the assumption is made that students will learn problem solving skills implicitly and use these skills when needed. An adaptation of the framework of Induction proposed by cognitive scientists Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett and Thagard in their text Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery (1986), was chosen as a theoretical base for the research. The model was chosen as it identifies three main components of problem solving: collecting information, analysing information and forming conclusions. These components were combined with the three types of knowledge also cited by cognitive scientists; declarative knowledge, knowing what; procedural knowledge, knowing how and conditional knowledge, knowing when and where. The three types of knowledge were used to structure the questions for the data collection which consisted of four interviews over a six month period, daily learning logs and four observations in each classroom. Sixty-four junior grade students from grades 4, 5 and 6 participated in the study. Each grade was taught the same two lesson segments, the first segment was developed for a content oriented environment and the second for a problem solving oriented environment. The objective was to identify student problem solving skills generated by the two teaching environments: one based on the Holland et al. (1986) framework of Induction in which skills, collecting information, analysing information and forming conclusions are integrated and coordinated in an explicit problem solving approach; the other, in which the same skills are developed in isolation with a focus on content. Results showed a shift in knowledge patterns from the content environment to the problem solving environment. After being taught in the problem solving environment, student explanations to declarative and procedural knowledge questions were better structured. In addition, there was a significant increase in their application or conditional knowledge to real life situations. Also, after a four month period, there was little decline in student recall of knowledge from the problem solving environment. In fact, retention increased for some students. The results show that the Holland et al. (1986) framework of Induction can be adapted to produce a simplified, systematic approach for curriculum design. The framework demonstrates that it can integrate the diversity and fragmentation of skills being recommended in curriculum guidelines and resource books.

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Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 138-146).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-146). Also available in print.