Abstract Community psychology, indeed psychology as a discipline, has been largely absent from the table of school reform.

Schools are critical socializing forces in society and serve as the one institution through which the full diversity of our child population passes. At the start of the 21st century, despite successive waves of legislation, the goals of the civil rights struggle for equality in educational opportunity have yet to be achieved. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies, reflected at individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels, play a critical role in creating and perpetuating unequal opportunities to learn. Such effects as well as pathways for preventive intervention are best understood through ecological lenses. Our field must commit a greater share of resources to collaborative and systemic change for a broader learning so that all children, regardless of their differences, have continuing and nonstigmatized opportunities to develop into competent adults. educational opportunity - self-fulfilling prophecies - diversity - children - school reform
Inequalities are considered among the most useful tools of investigation in pure and applied mathematics; yet their didactical aspects have not received much attention in mathematics education research until recently. An important aspect of teaching mathematical problem solving at the secondary level deals with the notion of equivalence of algebraic transformations used in replacing inequalities by equations. This article is motivated by computer-enhanced activities designed for and carried out with prospective teachers of mathematics. It shows that the appropriate use of computer graphing software has the potential to avoid errors and overcome misconceptions associated with the notion of equivalence in solving inequalities. The article demonstrates how mathematical visualization made possible by powerful yet user-friendly graphing technology provides learners with a conceptual insight into the sources of errors typical for the secondary mathematics classroom. ********** The current reform of school mathematics curricula and pedagogy is driven by the fundamental belief that all students should learn important mathematical concepts and procedures with understanding. Technology has great potential to play the major role in the realization of this belief. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000) has expressed its vision of the reform through a number of principles and standards. It has been suggested that whereas mathematical proficiency required for the 21st century workplace develops through conceptual understanding, the appropriate use of technology enables students' success in dealing with complex problems that otherwise were inaccessible to them. Indeed, technology "influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students' learning" (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000, p. 11).

Q2: There is growing evidence that changes in family structure, such as divorcee and remarriage, are associated with academic and psychological problems for children and that such problems vary with the age of the child. In this study, we investigated the incidence of school-related emotional and behavioral problems associated with variation in family structure in young adolescents using a large and nationally representative sample of eighth graders from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (Ingels et al., 1989b). Such problems, although more common in boys, are much more prevalent in families in which the natural mother is absent, especially in father-stepmother families. Using a multinomial-logit model, the unique association of family structure with these problems is evaluated after adjusting for demographic differences. An important finding is that interactions between the young adolescent's gender and that of the custodial parent critically influence outcomes, suggesting increased problems for girls of this age from families in which the mother has remarried or the natural father has custody.

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While expectancies are considered to be an important cognitive variable in the etiology and maintenance of substance use, less is known about their role in attitudes toward addictive behavior change. It has recently been suggested that negative alcohol expectancies, in particular, might play a fundamental role in motivation to change. Among a population of college student binge drinkers, the differential ability of positive and negative expectancies to predict total readiness to change (RTC) scores was examined. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that controlling for level of consumption and number of drinking-related problems, negative and not positive expectancies significantly predicted RTC. In an examination of expectancy subtypes, negative emotional expectancies emerged as the only significant predictor of change motivation. Possible explanations for the findings and implications for interventions with undergraduate heavy drinkers are discussed.