Today, Donny is in high school and a reader, Purcell-Gates said. To wonder what may have been the result if Jenny had not sought out Purcell-Gates, she points to a sobering statistic: a 78 percent drop out rate among urban Appalachians in many cities.

"One of the main conclusions in the book is that it is not just the presence of print for the child, it's the actual use of print that allows the learning to take place," she said. "Young children are paying attention to the people in their close circle or environment. They don't know in those very young ages that other people are reading and writing. To them, their world is what they experience where they live. And where the kids like Donny were living, no one read or wrote. So to them, reading and writing was not even something to reject. It didn't exist until they went to school.

"That is why it is so important to understand the worlds these children come from, so that you know what they are operating on.

Procedural knowledge is knowing how to do something; it involves making discriminations, understanding concepts, and applying rules that govern relationships and often includes motor skills and cognitive strategies

Declarative knowledge is knowing that something is the case

Problem solving may involve domain-specific strategies, suggesting that different strategies are employed when solving problems in different content a

Learning-style theory begins with Carl Jung (1927), who noted major differences in the way people perceived (sensation versus intuition), the way they made decisions (logical thinking versus imaginative feelings), and how active or reflective they were while interacting (extroversion versus introversion)

Most learning-style theorists have settled on four basic styles. Our own model, for instance, describes the following four styles: The Mastery style learner absorbs information concretely; processes information sequentially, in a step-by-step manner; and judges the value of learning in terms of its clarity and practicality. The Understanding style learner focuses more on ideas and abstractions; learns through a process of questioning, reasoning, and testing; and evaluates learning by standards of logic and the use of evidence. The Self-Expressive style learner looks for images implied in learning; uses feelings and emotions to construct new ideas and products; and judges the learning process according to its originality, aesthetics, and capacity to surprise or delight. The Interpersonal style learner,1  like the Mastery learner, focuses on concrete, palpable information; prefers to learn socially; and judges learning in terms of its potential use in helping others.

Student Choice: Assessment Products by Intelligence and Style