Background: Children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) meet other children with PIMD in day care centres or schools. This study explores the peer-directed behaviours of children with PIMD, the peer interaction-influencing behaviour of the direct support workers and the children's positioning. Method: Group activities for…

The purposes of the research were to (1) examine the relationships between faculty behaviors that promote critical thinking and the resulting critical thinking within peer interaction and (2) identify specific faculty behaviors that result in the highest levels of critical thinking within peer interactions. Using a concurrent embedded mixed…

Multilevel mediation analyses test whether students' mid-year reports of classroom experiences of autonomy, relatedness with peers, and competence mediate associations between early in the school year emotionally-supportive teacher-student interactions (independently observed) and student-reported academic year changes in mastery motivation and…

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…

It was shown that observation of a high-rewarding teacher was directly related to increased imitative behavior by students. (Author)

Supervisors of three integrated preschools were trained in a collaborative team approach to promoting children's peer interactions. Training resulted in classroom teachers increasing behaviors directed toward children with disabilities, a doubling of interactive play of children with disabilities, and increases in interactive play of comparison…

This study examined the specific factors that help teachers learn to implement innovations requiring non-routine teacher behaviors. Questions focused on the type of support teachers must have in order to make changes in their instructional approach. Thirteen teachers in the San Francisco area were observed as they attempted to teach the same…

The purpose of this study is to describe, document, and analyze the classroom management techniques an elementary school teacher uses to establish and maintain group norms. An analysis of the data collected for a teacher who used a group process approach to classroom management is presented. Two types of norms were observed operating in classroom…

This study of teacher behavior and peer interactions in preschools found that peer interaction of children with disabilities was associated with resource teacher focus on groups that included children with disabilities and/or resource teachers' no response and was inversely associated with classroom teachers' focus on children with disabilities…

An investigation of the interaction patterns of Polynesian and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European extraction) children and teachers in school and play areas of Auckland, New Zealand was undertaken to discover possible ethnic differences in modes of social interaction relevant to learning. Observations of children (ages 2 to 11) and their…

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 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…