Social events are constructed in two senses. First, each participant's understanding of the event is an active construction arising from his or her current level of understanding and from information provided in the environment. Second, events are social interactions that are negotiated between participants. Both of these senses of construction…

The literature on the practice of educational evaluation is reviewed, and internal and external evaluations in a school setting are compared. The paper states that the typical external evaluation is conducted as if school districts were rational organizations, a view which permeated 19th century evaluation activities. The internal evaluator, on…

Divided into four sections, this monograph focuses on effective evaluation in the whole language classroom. The first section discusses the whole language philosophy and classroom, and lists the beliefs that proponents of this approach hold about whole language teaching and teachers, language, and language learners. The second section addresses…

Discussed from a psychoanalytic perspective are areas of special difficulty in the phases of a three-year training observation of an infant and his family under the supervision of a 79-year-old child psychoanalyst and teacher. Specific attention is given to the child in relation to his family, the role of the observer in containing mother/infant…

Seven objectives were identified for the development of the Franklin County/Ohio State University Induction Project: (1) analyze existing research on beginning teachers and induction programs; (2) synthesize existing analyses of follow-up studies conducted in schools, colleges, and departments of education over the past decade; (3) synthesize…

Nineteen 4-year-old preschool children participated in a study designed to determine the effects of teaching communication skills in a day care center setting. The field experiment was conducted using a time series design. An observation guide consisting of a hierarchical arrangement of ineffective responses was used to obtain the frequency of…

The effects of introducing a microcomputer into an elementary-school classroom were studied using a naturalistic paradigm. Initial questions investigated the impact of the microcomputer on children's behavior, interactions, and responses to available software; and on the teacher's role. Data were fathered through: weekly observation for 4 months;…

Work done in Sweden under the purview of the Creativity and Communication: Music and Art Education Project included (1) developing theoretical premises and central research problems; (2) surveying art and music teachers at various levels of compulsory school concerning their views of the purpose, function, and conditions of art and music…

The field methods for data collection in a research project on linguistic change and variation in the Philadelphia speech community, their origins and use, are described. Five working principles of the project are detailed: (1) there are no single style speakers; (2) styles can be ranged along a single dimension, according to the attention paid to…

Part of a larger study of adolescent social-cognitive development and its influence on mother/child interaction, this investigation compared three methods of recording observations of mother/child interaction. It also explored correlations between sociodemographic variables and factor scores that summarized interaction variables. The sample…

This document contains the appendices to a study of problem-solving instruction. In Appendix A are sample instruments for the teacher problem-solving interview and instructional planning interview, the teacher post-study interview, coversheet for narrative notes and narrative notepad page, rating form for the lesson rating instrument, lesson…

The importance of a child's relationship with the same gender parent, which influences their interactions with mothers and fathers is discussed. Forty 2-year-old girls and boys were observed in interactions with mothers and fathers at home, and behavior ratings were based on the following criteria: availability, warmth, and power structure.…

This paper presents the personal narrative of a teacher who engaged in action research in her classroom. A step-by-step description, outlined in the prescribed form for conducting action research (plan, act, observe, and reflect), notes the successes and failures encountered throughout the experiment. A student teacher was conducting action…

In an attempt to explore the type of classroom environment that contributes to the development of critical thinking, and the questioning techniques and strategies employed there, prolonged observation was conducted in a fourth grade gifted classroom. The teacher of this classroom attempted to relate all her questioning strategies to the…

The intent of this paper is to illustrate the use of stakeholder information in evaluating a school program. The material presented is part of a comprehensive formative evaluation of a crisis intervention program operated by a suburban school district situated near a large industrial city in the Midwest. The crisis intervention program provided…