Academic institutions worldwide, from primary schools to universities, use grades or marks as a fundamental sorting and signaling mechanism for students. The grades awarded to students should be indicative of learning outcomes. However, do the grades awarded today accurately reflect student achievement in the classroom? Grade inflation has become…

In e-learning systems, the tutors play many roles and carry out several tasks that differ from one system to another. The activity of tutoring is influenced by many factors. One factor among them is the assignment of the appropriate profile to the tutor. For this reason, the authors propose a new approach for modeling and evaluating the function…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how faculty, staff and students at one American University define the term sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyze student, staff and faculty definitions by comparing word frequency counts to a list of the 25 most frequently found words in over 100 definitions of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure stability of the Student Evaluation of College Teaching Behaviors (SECTB), a 60-item, low inference type of student rating instrument designed to assess college teaching behaviors. While the original factor structure was based on the responses of both faculty and students, including…

Examined preservice teachers' ability to use component-specific feedback to positively influence elementary students' performance on overhead throw. Researchers developed an instrument to record teachers' verbal behaviors concurrent with student performance. Analysis of videotapes indicated teachers had content knowledge but limited ability to…

The concept of knowledge utilization and the nature of practical decisions are analyzed to investigate how research knowledge and effective teaching practice are related. It is argued that the personal commitments of teachers, common sense, and normative requirements can also be valid bases for action. The author points out that an over-reliance…

Preservice teachers' (N=22) knowledge level of pendulums was experimentally manipulated to examine effects the manipulation had on the extent of inquiry behaviors exhibited when teaching the topic to grade five children (N-54). Videotape recordings were used to examine how teachers used specific science knowledge to make decisions while teaching.…

In this study, 32 preservice teachers were interviewed about their epistemological beliefs, applying the Women's Ways of Knowing conceptualization to their thinking. Over half the students demonstrated significant amounts of procedural or constructed thinking. Results indicated the value of the Women's Ways of Knowing in seeking to understand…

An exploratory study was conducted at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) to document the knowledge of students held by a small number of highly effective primary school teachers and to identify the ways these teachers acquired their knowledge and used it during classroom instruction. This paper presents the findings of the…

Observers coded student-teacher classroom discussions and laboratory conversations which could be described as advisement, interpretation, confirmation, or reflection. All four verbal response modes imply presumption of knowledge of the person addressed. As hypothesized, teachers were more presumptuous than students, suggesting a link to social…

Preservice and inservice teacher education must prompt teachers and educators to question issues of race, class, and ethnicity and develop appropriate courses of action. Teacher research is useful in that regard. Teachers can use research in work with other teachers and teacher educators to examine their knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. (SM)

Although student populations of public schools are becoming increasingly diverse, the teacher population has remained relatively homogeneous, and many teachers do not have sufficient knowledge of or experience with other cultural groups to deal with differences in the classroom. Gay men and lesbians comprise one such cultural group. A survey of 42…

This bulletin contains the current specifications from which the questions on the professional education subtest of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination were developed. Information is provided on: (1) competencies and subskills tested by the subtest; (2) generic competencies evaluation strategies; (3) the content base for the professional…

Study tested the hypothesis that teacher candidates who were exposed to a theory-oriented normative model and given theory-oriented reinforcement within a practice-oriented context would manifest more positive attitudes toward learning theoretical knowledge than those who were not so exposed. Results proved the hypothesis was plausible. (SM)

Two papers on classroom teaching techniques and classroom environment in Botswana are presented. The first paper, "Is Teacher Training Associated with Teachers' Classroom Behavior? A Study of Botswana Junior Secondary School Teachers" by David W. Chapman and Conrad W. Snyder, Jr., investigates the extent to which teaching behaviors…