The austerity of the Great Depression, the popularity of progressive education, and scholarly research in reading from 1900 to 1930 initiated five golden years (1933-1938) of reading improvement in West Texas rural schools. Financial restraints relieved the schools from close scrutiny by the state's education agency. Schools were forced to…

The article describes different types of teacher expectations and expectation effects, particularly on minority students. Evidence for the existence of expectation effects is reviewed. Descriptions of behaviors associated with teacher expectations are summarized and recommendations are made for enhancing the learning environment for all students.…

Oral interviews with female teachers are used as the basis for an analysis of the personal, cultural, and social lives of women who taught in a small midwestern city during the 1930s. Portions of interviews with teachers are presented, and ethnographic theory and techniques used in the interviews are discussed. Analyses of the interviews focus on…

Discusses a teaching technique used in a child development course to increase education majors' awareness of personal feelings toward children and childhood. Following a brief summary of several related reports and an outline of six historical viewpoints on children, the technique and its results are explained. (DST)

Throughout the early years of the twentieth century, literacy education was based on the solid understanding of grammar. Yet as early as 1923, empirical data indicated that the link between knowledge of grammar and correct use of English was tenuous at best. Despite formidable evidence, some educators still advocate the use of grammar as a…

Historical information about how teachers have taught over the past century was reviewed to determine what patterns of teacher behavior have persisted over time, despite reformers' efforts to change them. Although there were periods of change during the 1920s and the 1960s, teacher-centered instruction reasserted itself after reform efforts…

Most studies on the history of educational ideas have focused on what influential educational theorists and policy-makers have said and written at particular times, constructing a "view from the top." The project from which this article is derived focused on the ways theoretical debates have been "lived" by teachers in New…

This paper examines remediation as the product of perceptions and beliefs about literacy and learning. It illustrates some ways teachers inadvertently participate in constructing inaccurate and limiting notions of learners as being cognitively defective and in need of "remedy," and thus limit classroom learning. It combines an empirical,…

Two specific questions guide this study: (1) Did teacher-centered instruction persevere in public schools during and after reform movements that had as one of their targets installing student-centered instruction? and (2) If the answer is yes, to what extent did it persist and why? If the answer is no, to what extent did instruction change and…

Virtually all of the essays in this collection reach the conclusion that corporal punishment in the schools is counterproductive. The book is organized into sections presenting historical, psychological, and legal perspectives on this subject, as well as case studies, opinion surveys, and the results of research. Rational alternatives to the use…

Considers student-teacher observation and evaluation as processes that define proper behavior and construct social forms of teaching behavior. Discusses documentary records on student-teachers' development. Analyzes nineteenth-century Training Registers of the Ontario Provincial Model School in terms of students' characteristics and evaluations,…

This biography of an influential nineteenth century New England educator, Nathaniel T. Allen (1823-1903), provides a profile of teaching and teacher education at a time when non-clerics emerged as teachers and educational leaders, and is based on a vast new collection of primary source materials in educational history. Allen's career, as it…

To elaborate upon the complexity of the change process in teachers caused by continuing reforms within the realm of mathematics education, this article presents narratives about three very different elementary/middle school teachers and traces the six cognitive requisites illustrated within the change process by these teachers. (JJK)

The papers included in this collection focus on two topics: teaching behavior in physical education, or women in sport. The papers include the following: A Model for the Study of Pygmalion Effects in Physical Education; A Need to Look at Dyadic Interactions; An Observational Study of Teacher's Expectancy Effects and Their Mediating Mechanisms;…

This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after reform impulses in the 20th century aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 90-year period are developed from evidence from a wide variety of sources, including classroom photographs, textbooks and tests used, student recollections,…