Schooling

most narrowly defined as the instruction or training given at school.  More broadly, however, the experience of schooling includes exposure to the dominant values, assumptions and knowledge types associated with the institution of the school.  See Education, Literacy, Information technology, National Literacy Strategy

Scheme

In Piaget‘s theory, a sensorimotor structure (e.g., a grasping scheme) that serves as an internal model for performing a particular movement such as looking, grasping and touching in similar circumstances.  Not the same as a schema.  See Accommodation, Assimilation, Cognitive structures, Décalage, Equilibration, Schema, Reciprocal assimilation

Scaffolding

In sociocultural and neo-Piagetian skill theories of development, the ways in which adults assist and support children in their attempts to perform complex tasks.  Scaffolding occurs when adults or more accomplished peers perform part of a task for a child, direct or otherwise structure a child’s actions in order to support task performance.  See Language …

Schema

A type of perceptual mechanism that can be said to recognise particular objects. Also refers to a mental representation of some feature of experience or the interpretation of new knowledge in terms of existing knowledge, following the meaning given by Frederic C. Bartlett (1866-1969) in his book Remembering A study in experimental and social psychology …

Sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR)

Endoplasmic reticulum of striated muscle specialised for the sequestration of calcium ions that are released upon receipt of a signal relayed by the T tubules from the neuromuscular junction (an area of membrane between a motoneuron and the muscle cell membrane forming a synapse between them) . See Endoplasmic reticulum (ER), Motoneuron, Striated muscle, Synapse

Sampling ratios

The number of sub-group persons to be included in a given study divided by the number of sub-group persons in the population from which the study sample is drawn.  Also used to describe the proportions of the study population of various sub-groups in comparison to the proportions of the target population.  See Oversampling