In New Zealand in order to provide authentic learning experiences teachers are counselled to access Communities of Practice (CoP) (Ministry of Education 2007). This research provides information about teachers' interactions with CoPs and the implication of this access on their pedagogy. A range of interactions occurred which was influenced by how…

An external evaluation documented what occurred in an inaugural summer camp to teach high school students how to preserve religious freedom by learning about and acting on the history and current state of church-state separation and other first amendment issues. Camp designers hoped to promote religious diversity values and civic engagement in…

The interaction between one teacher and two severely subnormal children was observed. The teacher was sensitive to differences between the children and varied certain aspects of her teaching. However, these variations appeared to be a function of relatively static models of the children, not modified to particular tasks. (Author/SJL)

Teachers possess several strategies to fine-tune their purposive interactions to children's needs. Our study investigates which strategies teachers use in their goal oriented interactions with pupils, whether differentiation is perceptible in the way they interact with children whom they define as "children at risk" as compared to the…

An instrument, "The Teacher Student Interaction Analysis," was developed to supply direct observation data on the number and kinds of teacher/student interactions and display data visually. The paper describes the instrument, summarizes field testing procedures and outcomes, and illustrates analysis outcomes. (Author/DB)

Dynamic aspects of maternal language instruction and first language learning were explored by observing one- to five-year-old middle-class children with their mothers. (CM)

Twelve fifth- and sixth-grade field-dependent and field-independent teachers were observed for 96 hours in regular elementary classrooms. Statistically significant differences were obtained from 8 out of 10 instructional behaviors observed between field-dependent and field-independent teachers. (Author/SJL)

A British observational study of science classroom interactions was replicated in Atlantic Canada with 33 teacher-class units. Comparison of results revealed a less practical approach to science teaching in the Canadian classrooms, with greater emphasis on the informational aspects of science and convergent, problem-solving activities. (Editor/SJL)

The contemporary behavioralistic analysis of teaching assumes a necessary empirical relationship between differences in teacher behavior and levels of student achievement. This paper argues that this assumption lacks both empirical support and conceptual plausibility. Consequences of accepting the null hypothesis of differential teacher…

Investigates the influence of treatment and the interactions between treatments and selected pupil characteristic variables, with respect to pupil achievement and preference for treatment, and examines treatment-teacher interactions. Among the findings, this study suggests that students prefer to operate in less structured modes for the medium or…

This study investigated the range of communicative intentions (CIs) used by 3 hearing teachers and 11 preschool children with hearing losses in a lesson context. The study found that teachers used all the following CI categories: conversational devices, descriptions, performatives, requests, responses, statements, and uninterpretables. Only 7…

Observations of an elementary teacher's behavior determined that her teaching behavior remained stable and did not vary in relation to the content of the lessons. The teacher's pre-instructional decision concerning the grouping of pupils appeared to influence her interaction processes. (JD)

Verbal interactions of 46 special education teachers in specific language and learning disability (SLD) classrooms, educable mentally retarded (EMR) classrooms, and trainable mentally retarded (TMR) classrooms were described and compared. The teachers varied, by classroom type, in their use of direct or indirect teaching styles, but the former…

Recognizes the importance of nonverbal behavior (65% of communication is nonverbal) in the elementary and secondary school classrooms, and provides examples and a method for observing this behavior in student teachers. (NKA)

In this age of greater accountability, local school districts within the USA increasingly use summer school programs as an intervention service to provide students who have failed to meet classroom, district, or state performance requirements with the opportunity to "catch up." Although such programs attempt to provide varying types of…