The effectiveness of three instructional designs--reading-recitation, Gagne, and Merrill and Tennyson--in teaching social studies concepts to fourth graders was examined. Differences among the three treatment groups' means were small and insignificant but differed substantially and significantly from the control group mean. (Author/RM)

Discusses a study focusing on teachers' preferences for global models of teaching. The differences in the preference patterns of elementary and secondary teachers were found to be small (although statistically significant), suggesting that training for the two groups in basic instructional skills improvement may be unduly differentiated. (WD)

Compares the 1907 Music Educators National Convention (MENC) with their seventy-fifth annual meeting. Although the social contexts of the two conventions differed, there were similarities. Teachers are still very interested in teaching methods and still desire to maintain the MENC as an open forum for all educational viewpoints. (AM)

Uses a naturalistic setting to explore the effects of word-recognition instruction by a context method and a word-alone method to find out if mode of assessment plays a part in determining efficiency of methods. (HOD)

Discussing the advantages of self-paced and leader-led instruction, the author presents a 23 item questionnaire which measures factors to be considered before selecting the type of instruction. The questionnaire considers areas such as trainee population, course objectives, instructional design, administrative procedures, and developmental…

A study of the effectiveness of tape-slide teaching at the University of Exeter is described. Tape-slides were produced for a pilot comparison with the lecture method in the first year; in the second year, updated versions of the tape-slide sequences were used in a main trial comparison. (Author/MLW)

Subjects completed a self-paced lesson on math rules in which the number of supporting examples was adapted to pretest scores through program control, selected through learner control, or kept constant (nonadaptive). Program control means were consistently highest while learner control means were lowest. (Author/BW)

An advance organizer is a set of conceptual statements about the unifying ideas of a topic in terms already familiar to the learner. A study is reported that sought to determine whether two presentations of an advance organizer for a unit on pathogenic bacteria would result in increasing medical students' knowledge and ability to solve problems in…

The author describes two approaches to the development of talk in early childhood--behavioristic, which provides instruction in specific skills of grammar and vocabulary, and the approach which encourages the development of meaning rather than refining the structure of speech. (KC)