Presented is another document in the Technical Report series produced at the Science Education Center of the University of Iowa. This publication emphasizes curriculum evaluation. Material is presented in three sections: an introductory section in which the components of curriculum are identified and described; a second section in which these…

This paper examines some issues associated with emerging educational programs and training concepts and suggests some basic organizing principles for developing competency-based programs for the education of school leaders. The issues discussed include the following: (a) reliability of instructional systems in producing desired outcomes, (b)…

Reform in science and mathematics has moved from rote learning of facts and computation skills toward the learning of a structure of a subject matter. At present there is little empirical evidence to support any contentions that there is a match between the subject-structure taught and the cognition in subjects' memories resulting from the…

Fifty-two students from two universities who had demonstrated mastery of the use of behavioral objectives were randomly assigned either ten knowledge level objectives (K), ten above knowledge level objectives (A), or to a non-objectives control group (C). All were tested on the same prose material using knowledge and above knowledge level items…

The uses of simulation as a technique for instruction and research have been expanding over the past ten years. As an aid to educational practitioners, the sampling procedures associated with trivariate normal populations are described along with a description of an APL/1500 computer program for this level of multivariate sampling in educational…

Statewide testing can serve four important functions: can illustrate superior results of a group of schools where no one would expect it and raise questions about how they accomplished it; statewide testing deals with the generally lower scores of disadvantaged minorities, it can put the differences in perspective by showing comparable differences…

Since listening plays such a large role in communication and learning, audio tapes can function in an important fashion in the design and delivery of instruction. In addition, recent research indicates that compressed audio tapes, in which speech is edited electronically by a sampling method so that the words-per-minute rate is increased without…

The series is a collection of translations from the Soviet literature of the past 25 years on research in the psychology of mathematical instruction and the related methods of teaching mathematics. The aim of the series is to acquaint educators and teachers with directions, ideas, and accomplishments in the psychology of mathematics instruction in…

The role of inhibition as related to sex differences in aggression was investigated using 20 nursery school and 20 second grade children. A dart gun was employed, with choices of four targets--drawings of a boy, a girl, a zebra, and an object. There were three sessions and eight target choices per session. Choice of the human target was assumed to…

This paper presents a method of encoding geometric line-drawings in a way which allows sets of such drawings to be interpreted as formal languages. A characterization of certain geometric predicates in terms of their properties as languages is obtained, and techniques usually associated with generative grammars and formal automata are then applied…

This monograph questions the use of grading as an evaluation of student performance. The paper emphasizes that grading does not take into consideration some of the factors that affect learning: a) individuality, b) responsibility of the student, c) experience in learning, and d) motivation. Research on the detrimental effects of the present system…

A recent review of the literature, dealing with the effects of presenting instructional objectives on learning, determined that objectives failed to raise learning in about half the experiments. The interpretation for the failures exclusively relied on a theoretical analysis of problems with the technique. An alternative analysis, and supporting…

A questionnaire and sentence completion test which consisted of hypothetical frustrating situations in the areas of school, peer and parental relations was administered to 27 educable mentally retarded (EMR) groups of nongainers, gainers and high scorers, defined by the Kohs learning potential (LP) procedure. More able (LP) subjects (high scorers…

The authors discuss their replications of 2 prominent studies in the area of modeling aggressive behavior; those of Lovaas and Bandura. In the first, they predicted that, given the same socio-economic background, there would be no differences between black and white children in the amount of aggressive play subsequent to viewing an aggressive…

Described is an empirical and rational inquiry into the formation of a small set of special or geometrical concepts of young children. The approach taken by the author is to attempt to specify intellectual growth in one particular area, a child's acquisition of diagonality, in such a way as to be representative. That is, to give a clean portrayal…