In order to become productive members of an academic community, it is important for students to master its procedural practices. By adapting Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital, habitus, and field, we examined procedural practices of first-graders from minority and low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds in the context of student-led literacy…

The fundamental differences in classroom social structure and the effect of teaching behavior on the unique patterns of classroom social structures were studied. Subjects included fifth-grade classrooms with female teachers in a small city school system. Eighteen classrooms with a total of 576 children fit these criteria. Instrumentation included…

Situational analysis of student-teacher and student-student interaction during a kindergarten/first grade social occasion provides information on verbal and nonverbal behavior forms, situational contexts, and tacit rules of classroom interaction. (MJB)

An assessment is made of the conflicting claims that either co-operation or competition between pupils facilitates pupil learning. (Author)

A systematic analysis was made of the communications of 5- and 6-year-old children in two kindergarten classrooms to discover whether children's face-to-face interactions with peers included "face work" components (rituals through which individuals manage impressions when it becomes difficult to maintain a social situation) and, if so,…

A conceptual model of learning environments and the procedures necessary for its investigation are proposed. It is argued that a research agenda involving longitudinal, comparative case-study designs and using field-method techniques is the only method capable of generating a solid base of information on the relationship between structural…

This paper presents a study of the organization of 60 junior school classrooms in Great Britain. The study was conducted to examine changes occurring as a result of the move towards comprehensive secondary education in Britain and as a result of the recommendations of the Plowden Committee for more individualized instruction at the primary level.…

This collection of 11 articles focuses on integrating handicapped and nonhandicapped children in preschool programs. Article 1 presents arguments for preschool integration. Article 2 discusses research on peer interaction and mixed-age socialization. Article 3 advocates a behavior analysis and operant conditioning approach to studying and…

This paper examines the power of particular affect and rejection socioquestions to produce characteristic patterns across all the sociometric choices of 576 fifth-graders in 18 classrooms. Of particular concern are the degrees of centrality exhibited in response to socioquestions which pertain to academic competence and failure and the overall…

This study, one of a series investigating dyadic infracommunication in natural, academic, and laboratory settings, utilizes a simple observation technique such as that employed by anthropologists living among members of a society or subcultural group, observing and recording their behavior patterns, including their communication modes. Subjects…

This study reports on differences in children's interactional behaviors in traditional and nontraditional classrooms. The Differentiated Child Behavior Observational System which provides for systematic recording of group behavior in ongoing classroom activities, was applied in two days of observation in each of 17 classrooms (grades 1 to 3, ages…