A study examined the different degrees of satisfaction with the nominal group technique (NGT) felt by policymakers and change agents with differing professional backgrounds and responsibilities who participated in nominal groups. A total of 206 participants at four conferences at Texas A&M University (international food and water policy, Texas…

Shows how teachers can demonstrate the importance of accurate historical accounts by "falsifying" the history contained in their textbooks. Recommends that the teacher enter the classroom with false "corrections" sent by the textbook author. Concludes by describing activities designed to help students examine and refute the false account. (JDH)

Supports the "functional" view that it is the satisfaction of critical task requirements (or conditions), rather than the discussion procedures that are employed to do so, that actually determines whether a group will arrive at a low- or high-quality decision. (PD)

The paper describes the characteristics of a successfully operating study group for practicing special education teachers to promote professional exchange and problem solving and maintenance and generalization of professional teacher practices. Procedural characteristics are noted as well as some social validation data collected from group…

Techniques for achieving control of and producing results from task-oriented meetings with peers are discussed, including acquiring a perceived mandate, structuring attendance, and developing a working, narrative agenda. A productivity matrix correlates meeting activities with appropriate group leadership behaviors. (SK)

The establishment of a mental health clinic in a community recreational park is described. (JD)

Describes the processes utilized during the Symposium on Catholic Education held in 1976 and concludes with comments upon those processes. (Author/RK)

Developed behavior observation system for group supervision, designed to measure occurrence of verbal problem-solving behavior during group supervision meetings. Obtained reliability data from four counseling teams' group supervision meetings at residential facility for children with social and emotional problems. Results indicated that system had…

A new textbook was considered which included engaging, carefully sequenced problems to help students develop skill and understanding of division. The teacher's manual encouraged Boerst to provide opportunities for the students to share multiple methods for division in order to reinforce the idea that many ways exist to solve mathematical problems.

In this study, 100 Italian eighth graders were divided into two groups to compare the effects of two instructional interventions--the first based on problem-solving through discussion, the second on individual problem-solving--on students' learning of two historical topics (World War I and the economic boom), interest and self-perception of…

An important result of physics education research is that students' learning and success in a course is correlated with their beliefs, attitudes, and expectations regarding physics. However, it is hard to assess these beliefs for individual students, and traditional survey instruments such as the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) are…

In a teaching experiment, 16 face-to-face and 11 e-mail Finnish university students engaged in an argumentation course. The 19 students of the control group did not study argumentation. The course involved two lectures, exercises with argumentative texts, and face-to-face or e-mail seminar discussions based on these texts. The topics of the texts…