Examines the effects of literacy-enriched play settings on preschoolers' literacy behaviors in spontaneous free play. Finds differences in frequency, duration, and complexity of literacy demonstrations in play. Finds that children incorporated literacy objects in more diverse and functional ways than children playing in a normal physical…

Characterizations, given in the form of descriptive adjectives, of second- through fifth-grade elementary school children by their classroom teachers and by classroom observers were analyzed in this report and compared with each other. Females consistently received more favorable characterizations than males, especially as reflected in teacher…

Three investigations were conducted to examine the consistency of classroom seating among college students. These three studies indicate that both biological sex and psychological sex may be important when studying human territoriality. (Author)

Concludes that Black and White kindergarten children indicate a preference for same-color peers at the beginning of kindergarten, that this preference increases over the school year, and that differences in behavioral style between Blacks and Whites may play a role in same-color preferences. (Author/RH)

This paper reports findings from a naturalistic study of children's peer interactions in a kindergarten classroom. As the participant observation field-work of the study progressed, it became clear that much of children's interaction in their kindergarten classroom was covert in nature. That is, it took place in classroom contexts defined as…

Kindergarten teachers' directives uttered during the first month of school were compared with those uttered three months later. It was expected that changes associated with different classroom organizational structures, with increasing child sophistication, and with size of group being addressed, would influence the type and clarity of teacher…

This report compares the on-task behavior (industriousness) of K-3 students in the demonstration school of the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) with that of children from classes in four public schools. Industriousness was measured by tallying the occurrence of such behaviors as working on an appropriate task, attending to the teacher, or…

A review of the literature on cooperative, competitive, and independent reward structures and performance is presented, and conclusions are drawn which reformulate current beliefs about the interaction between reward structure and task structure. A brief theory of reward structure and performance is described, and conditions under which…

The effects of class size, classroom organization, and grade on friendship choice and clique formation were examined using cross-sectional and longitudinal sociometric data. Classroom characteristics affected friendliness and popularity, incidence of cross-sex friendships, number of social isolates per class, and number and size of cliques.…

The effects of preschool children's activity participation on a broad range of social and task-oriented behaviors was investigated. Effects of high versus low structure activities within classrooms and effects of high versus low overall structure between classrooms were examined. A measure of the amount of teacher feedback to individuals was used…

This study investigated the behavioral responses of eight children to five alternate lesson types. Barker's assertion of the coercive nature of setting was examined. Questions addressed were: (1) Do children having the same or similar lessons behave asimilarly or differently? (2) Do children change their patterns of behavior as they move from one…

The use of prompting to increase peer-tutoring skills in an entire third grade classroom was investigated. A multiple baseline design was used in establishing three tutoring components: praise corrective feedback, and re-presenting the question. Results indicated that all three tutoring behaviors increased after prompting. During the last…

The instructional organization patterns used by experienced teachers in coping with classroom environmental demands is described. Observations of teachers in natural settings were conducted using both a self-designed observation schedule and brief narratives to capture the nature of the classroom climate. Results suggest that teachers use…

Quantitative and qualitative observations were made of the classroom interactions of four teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL; two male and two female) to assess gender-specific behavior. All but one showed remarkable equality in their classroom interactions with the genders. (SLD)

Finds 3 patterns of book-reading experiences in 24 classrooms of 4-year olds: coconstructive; didactic-interactional; and performance-oriented. Finds larger gains (one year later) by children in the performance-oriented classrooms than by those in the didactic-interactional rooms. Reveals strong effects of child-involved analytic talk on…