Researchers studied components of a two-year school-wide Striving Readers intervention aimed at bolstering middle school teachers' use of literacy strategies to raise students' reading achievement. Although students of intervention teachers had significantly higher Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) scores than students of non-participating…

Value judgments play a role in evaluation by determining the anticipated behavioral outcomes, what is measured, techniques for measurement, and decision making. Value judgments are usually faced only at the decision-making stage. Methods to analyze values will hopefully be given more emphasis in future evaluation enterprises. Studies using…

Data from a Class Activities Questionnaire was used in the evaluation of the state gifted program in Illinois to determine patterns of cognitive and affective emphasis in gifted and average classes. Significant differences were found in the degree of emphasis on higher thought processes, classroom focus, and classroom climate. Significant…

Training in perspective-taking skills (the ability to imagine how objects look relative to one another from another person's point of view) resulted in considerable transfer of learning to other tasks and continued subject superiority over controls seven months later, indicating an inter-stage change in cognition. (MJB)

The authors challenge proponents of informal open classrooms" as well as of traditional school organization. (Editor)

This paper comments on the thesis that cognitive style and affective reaction variables ought to be taken into account in the evaluation of instruction. Observations are expressed as questions relating to cognitive style: Which style is it better for an individual to have? Can cognitive style be adapted to fit a particular learning task? Can it be…

In the High/Scope Cognitively Oriented Curriculum, teachers create an environment in which students develop and apply cognitive capacities in the areas of classification, seriation, spatial and temporal relations and in the process of representation to the widest ranges of materials and subjects. Learning takes place through the child's…

Since the early 1980s we have been engaged in the design, implementation, and evaluation of "cognitive acceleration" programs, which claim to enhance students' general intellectual processing skills. We have published extensive data showing long-term effects of these programs on students? cognitive development and academic achievement. In this…

Cognitive styles--defined as information processing habits--should be considered as a criterion variable in the evaluation of instruction. Research findings identify the characteristics of different cognitive stles. Used in educational practice and evaluation, cognitive styles would be new process variables extending the assessment of mental…

The Perry Preschool Project assessed longitudinal effects of a 2-year program consisting of a daily 3-hour cognitively oriented nursery, a weekly 90-minute home visit, and less frequent group meetings of the pupils' parents. Subjects consisted of 3- and 4-year-old Negro disadvantaged and functionally retarded children, whose pretest scores on the…

This autobiographical essay depicts a process of development through which an elementary school teacher becomes both expert and professional. With an MA in Medieval History and no teacher education coursework, the writer adopts a personalistic, "unorthodox traditional" approach to instruction. Exposure to controversy among…

This book starts with a review of the evolution of the notion of intelligence in its first chapter. In 1969, an article by psychologist Arthur R. Jensen suggested that there may be innate differences in intellectual potential between blacks and whites, and, if so, these differences should be taken into account in educational planning. The…

Research has established that students generally possess conceptions relevant to curricular topics before they begin to study them and that these preconceptions often persist despite instruction on scientific theories which contradict them. Discrepancies between students' post instruction conceptions and the scientific theories as taught often…

During the past decade, it has become fashionable to include an evaluation component with each new bilingual education program. The proliferation of empirical evaluation studies seems, however, not yet to have shed much light on very basic issues, such as the relationship between language of instruction and cognitive growth, academic achievement…

In past Head Start evaluations, cognitive measures have been weighed heavily. This has not accurately reflected the relative unimportance of cognitive program goals; child performance gains are not an objective with high priority for most Head Start programs. Evaluation planners need to weigh previously encountered measurement problems carefully…