Are schools able to prepare children for the stresses of unemployment? This follow-up study of school leavers, seven years later, looks at the effects of finding yourself in an unsatisfactory job, and of being unemployed 'doing nothing in particular'.

As industry has restructured itself, become leaner and meaner, attitudes to work have changed. In the USA worried corporation heads have called for schools to teach children to be good workers. The trends are enumerated and the reasons exposed.

This chapter from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (a marvellous resource for schools) is reproduced by permission. It summarises physiology, experiments and conflicting theories, and explains current knowledge.

This classic research is reprinted from set No.1, 1983 because it has lost none of its relevance today. In suburbs where classes were increasing and decreasing in size, the effects of crowding on attending, withdrawing, and aggressive behaviour were discovered.

Regular racegoers, despite some low IQ scores, use, in that real world, extremely complex multivariate reasoning to pick winners. This research into IQ, expertise, and cognitive complexity has become a classic. New, further, discoveries are promised for set No.2.

A student in her final year at a College of Education reflects on a lesson she gave, taped and transcribed. A model of self-appraisal, which will also stimulate thoughts about how to teach junior mathematics.

The extreme methods (competition and laissez faire) are examined and research results mentioned. Her own research study of what children prefer, points to a middle way, focusing children's attention on 'improvement over time'.

Teachers can successfully encourage learners to be better thinkers. A research study of techniques for teaching metacognition (thinking about thinking) to 8-year-olds leads to conclusions about how to do it successfully.

What is good thinking? Creative thinking is always a pleasure. Critical thinking tends to get a bad press, but it is just as necessary. Here it is carefully analysed, and research adds insights on teaching children to think critically.

Published 101 years ago by an anonymous author, a small pamphlet extolled the virtues of votes for women. Here is the original re-written as a play for schools and any other group.