This guide to improving student persistence is the first part of a four-part series addressing the essential characteristics of effective instruction that have a positive impact on the academic achievement of Black and Hispanic students. Persistence is learned behavior, and lower-class students are more likely than middle-class students to observe…

This guide to improving cross-cultural communication is the second part of a four-part series addressing the essential characteristics of effective instruction that have a positive impact on the academic achievement of Black and Hispanic students. Since schools tend to reflect the norms and values of the majority culture, cultural…

The lack of opportunity for high school sophomores to learn database searching was addressed by the implementation of a computerized magazine article search program. "Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature" on CD-ROM was used to train students in database searching during the time they were assigned to the library to do research papers…

This paper presents a psychology professor's account of his experiences teaching a course on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome/Human Immunodeficiency Virus (AIDS/HIV) to college students. The first section discusses how to introduce and market the course on campus, and anticipate students' and colleagues' questions about one's motivations for…

This study examines whether male and female teachers differ in: (1) their background or training for instructional uses of microcomputers, and (2) their uses of microcomputers to teach mathematics and science. Research carried out in 60 classrooms in 49 schools in 25 California school districts provided data on district and school microcomputer…

This issue of the journal contains abstracts and critical comments for 10 published reports on research in mathematics education. The reports concern children's school mobility and achievement, preservice teachers' sources of decisions, spatial visualization in boys and girls, rote versus conceptual emphases in teaching probability, using drawings…

This study compared the efficiency (time) and accuracy of two representations of instructional algorithms--list versus flow chart--for the task of using indexes to search for document numbers in the U.S. Documents Monthly Catalog. Participants were 55 undergraduates and 5 adults at the Virginia Military Institute. Two sets (flow charts and lists)…

The suspected sources of confounding in current meta-analytic studies of computer based instruction (CBI) are uncontrolled effects of instructional method and/or the John Henry Effect (i.e., compensatory rivalry). To determine which confounding is most plausible, a random 30% sample of the 128 studies which formed the original Kulik meta-analyses…

An experiment investigated the effectiveness of teaching grammar by deductive versus inductive methods in an intensive course in English as a second language. Additional student variables considered were general intelligence, verbal ability, cognitive ability, and sex. The subjects were 259 students in the Faculty of Education at Egypt's Tanta…

Rural teachers are confronted with the task of providing appropriate education to exceptional students, as well as addressing the added elements of language and culture issues as these pertain to handicapping conditions. Key points in the identification and instruction of these students are initial referral, early intervention, and appropriate…

As part of the TV Ontario Telidon and Education Field Trials, a study was made of the application of the Telidon videotex systems to computer-assisted learning (CAL), including the future directions of these applications and differences in achievement between advanced and general-level students. Subjects were 129 middle- to upper-middle,…

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of interactive video in teaching study skills and to discover: (1) the overall attitudes of students toward computer-directed instruction (CDI) as compared to traditional teaching methods; (2) whether two groups, instructed via CDI and traditional methods, differed significantly in knowledge of…

To examine the role of elaborations in learning a procedural skill (i.e., using a personal computer) from an instructional text, 88 members of the Carnegie-Mellon University community (students, faculty, and staff members) participated in two experiments. Experimental sessions consisted of a reading period followed by a task performance period in…

This study compared teachers instructed in use of Landsat satellite maps through one-way television and simultaneous telephone group conferencing to another teacher group instructed directly. Thirty teachers of intermediate children in Edmonton and Sherwood Park, Alberta, received 5 hours of instruction about Landsat maps over a 2-week period;…

Part of a continuing series intended for use by reading professionals interested in understanding and improving the reading of adolescents, this report contains four articles dealing with subjects of current interest. Topics covered in the articles are (1) the effects on readers' recall of directions describing passage structure, signaling, and…