After an extensive review of the literature on the theoretical underpinnings of humor in human interaction, a six-category typology of humor was developed and exemplified by examples from mass media comedy. Humor can first be divided into two major types: individual level humor or social level humor. These levels are then further divided into the…

The purpose of this study was to derive a reliable system for classifying the 1,425 responses of over 800 teacher education candidates to a survey regarding adjectives used to describe teacher characteristics. Previous research had indicated five major themes underlying the adjectives teacher candidates think their students will use in describing…

A grammar based on speech acts to be used by second language teachers, syllabus planners, and instructional materials writers is outlined. The grammar proposes only two basic categories of speech act: (1) those involving a negotiation between speaker and addressee, and (2) those designed by the speaker to give information to the addressee. The…

This paper is a progress report of the first phase of a project which essentially seeks to replicate previous studies using the successful/unsuccessful design in an attempt to: (1) corroborate the surface/deep structure conclusion which has become an essential component of an understanding of problem-solving; (2) examine more closely the nature of…

An inventory of academic programs offered for credit and leading to an academic award offered by Alabama's public senior institutions and branch campuses as of June 1, 1986, is presented. For each college and program, charts indicate program titles, levels of degrees offered, and accreditation status. Included are summary charts of degrees offered…

This paper reviews the research leading from the GUIDON rule-based tutoring system, including the reconfiguration of MYCIN into NEOMYCIN and NEOMYCIN's generalization into the heuristic classification shell, HERACLES. The presentation is organized chronologically around pictures and dialogues that represent turning points and crystallize the basic…

A poorly designed knowledge base can be as cryptic as an arbitrary program and just as difficult to maintain. Representing inference procedures abstractly, separately from domain facts and relations, makes the design more transparent and explainable. The combination of abstract procedures and relational language for organizing domain knowledge…

A study was conducted in which bibliometric techniques were applied to a collection of journal articles to identify the most important journals publishing information in the field of early childhood education. Specifically, 242 journals included in ERIC's "Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE)" were identified and assigned to…

A study examined and classified the typing vocabulary present in six contemporary texts used in secondary school typing classes. During this examination, the researcher classified words pertaining to the following instructional areas: learning the keyboard letters and numbers, learning machine parts, developing typing speed, and improving typing…

This system for describing teaching events is intended to facilitate the analysis of classroom observations for purposes of comparing, documenting, or evaluating different instructional techniques. The typology is designed to describe a wide range of settings and teaching styles. The descriptors are organized into two groups that simultaneously…

Educators generally assume that questioning promotes learning and that higher level questions do so better than lower level questions. But there are a number of problems with these assumptions. First, the classification of questions as higher level or lower level is ambiguous. The distinction is confused by such issues as non-controversial…

In response to problems in classifying grammaticality judgments in linguistic theory, a psychological model of speakers' performance on grammaticality judgment tasks is presented. The model departs significantly from notions of metalinguistic performance outlined in previous research, and is derived principally from recent work in category theory.…

An update of the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP), a taxonomy for instructional programs at all levels (elementary to graduate, though primarily postsecondary) is presented. CIP, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Education's Center for Education Statistics (CES), is used in all CES surveys and is the accepted government…

This report is the result of a study to assess whether American Samoans should be designated as Native Americans under the Job Training Partnership Act. The finding is that there is insufficient evidence in favor of such a change in designation. To designate American Samoans as Native Americans may set a precedent for amending numerous other…

Any attempt to describe every job position and the activities contained in it would yield a confusing mass of information. Consequently, industrial psychologists have generated methods for classifying occupational positions into a smaller number of jobs or job families. Based on prior research it has been concluded that different kinds of job…