This symposium focused on the special needs of visually handicapped infants and young children. Texts of 48 papers are presented, including keynote addresses by W. Aubrey Webson ("The First Steps") and Heather Hewitt ("First Steps--Parenting, Prevention and Programming"). Regional reports are provided for Japan, Bangladesh, the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with the following topics: (1) confrontation between public school teachers and their employers, (2) President Jimmy Carter's communication with the black electorate, (3) public communication channels regarding…

Although "Sharing Time" is a popular and widespread activity in English for Young Learners (L2) classrooms around the world, there have so far been no research studies of the interaction that is generated and its relationship to learning processes. The aims of this study were to find out how interaction is organized during "Sharing…

This study is an attempt to identify social interactions which fit into a Piagetian model for cognitive change, and specifically to examine the degree to which the frequency of those interactions predicts the rate of cognitive development. The subjects were 74 elementary school children enrolled in 19 K-4 classrooms. These children were in the…

The child brings to the classroom a socially conditioned way of behaving, both verbal and nonverbal, which reflects both the maturational process and sociocultural conditioning, and a socially conditioned view of what the norms of the dominant society are and what that society expects of him or her. The school attempts to transmit the cultural…

Findings from the Student Attribute Study, a two-year investigation designed to identify student characteristics and behaviors related to teacher expectations and attitudes are reported. Children in grades two through five who received consistent teacher rankings over a two-year period on one or more of 13 bi-polar scales describing student…

This coding manual was developed for the Texas Teacher Effectiveness Study and is intended to be self-contained. The coding system provides for extensive coding of student initiated questions and comments, opinion questions, and expanded private work contracts, both teacher initiated and student initiated, including extensive coding of quality and…

The purpose of this study was to develop and test the effectiveness of a program in which activity-based science was used as a conceptual basis for language instruction. A series of four instructional units were adapted for bilingual use. Students' written and oral observations were used in experience charts and other language development…

The main perspective taken in this paper is that peer relationships in childhood provide more than incidental social experiences and constitute social contexts beyond those in the family. In the context of peer relationships, children's development continues to progress as children expand their experiences and increase their knowledge. Three major…

The effects of amount of exposure to response/outcome independence and teacher expressiveness on student ratings of the instructor, achievement test performance, and attribution items were studied. University students completed an aptitude test that provided contingent or noncontingent feedback and varied in length (short, medium, or long). All…

Surveys of 380 Wisconsin farm households taken in 1953, 1963 and 1973 documented social, attitudinal, institutional and technological changes over a 20-year period, and suggested some basic trends in neighborhood and kin contacts, farm-practice adoption, attitudes toward education, and participation in voluntary organizations. Educational trends…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: the relationships among psychological differentiation, situational context, and linguistics; the effect of cognitive complexity and audience attitude on persuasive…

The Spanish-English teacher's guide to unit four of the bilingual social science program for second grade students contains instructional activities to expand the child's conceptual field to the neighborhood. Kits 13-16 include assessment activities; each kit is to be used for two to three weeks. Focus, objective, and materials are listed for each…

This anthropological and sociological study of a Jewish school (the Lubavitcher School) in Victoria, Australia examines the problems of an ethnic group trying to preserve its culture and values within a multicultural society. The study focuses on pressures facing both students and teachers over 15 months. The three major parts of the book discuss…

This three-part curriculum for entrepreneurship education is primarily for postsecondary level, including four-year colleges and adult education, but it can be adapted for special groups of vocational teacher education. The emphasis of the eight instructional units in Part III is operating a business. Unit G focuses on community relations. It…