Review of Educational Research

Developmental disability is explored using a post-disciplinary approach through social construction and cultural cartography metaphors. It is drawn on social maps as a cultural territory created by the totalizing, mystifying science of positivism. People described as "having" developmental disabilities inhabit landscapes that are pathologized and marginalized, surrounded by impermeable label borders created by processes of quantification and numbering. Although seen as necessary by some in order to obtain adequate services for their survival in schools and other institutions of modernist society, these borders do not benefit those they contain. Instead, cartographies created by special education and other human service practices become reified, commodified, and objectified, providing a rationale for continued de-humanization and oppression. Alternative metaphors to labeling and other educational practices are suggested as new ways of drawing cultural maps. Policy implications for those educational and research sites seeking to change professionalized discourse to include labeled, otherized persons are discussed.

The purpose of this review was to (a) overview prior knowledge research and its role in student performance, and (b) examine the effects of prior knowledge in relation to the method of assessment. We selected 183 articles, books, papers, and research reports related to prior knowledge. While prior knowledge generally had positive effects on students' performance, the effects varied by assessment method. More specifically, prior knowledge was more likely to have negative or no effects on performance when flawed assessment measures were used. However, in some studies, flawed methods yielded informative results. Thus, in educational research the implications of assessment measures must be considered when examining the effects of prior knowledge.

This article reviews research on multi-age classroom organization as an option for high ability students. Studies of both cognitive and affective factors in multi-age contexts have consistently shown positive, sometimes significant, effect sizes. Studies of different types of ability grouping have shown that arrangements most likely to have positive and significant results are those where the curriculum is differentiated. Teachers of multi-age classes may be more likely to see their students as diverse than as similar and to provide developmentally appropriate (that is, differentiated) curricula. Multi-age classes are discussed as an alternative to self-contained classes and pullout programs for high ability children.