A study investigated instructors' responses to learners' needs from the perspective of Feuerstein's Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) theory. Participants were 53 adult educators enrolled in an adult education course at Auburn University. Four scenarios were constructed, each based on one of the five MLE criteria (intentionality, meaning,…

A study examined how 8 writers, both successful and less successful (4 of each), constructed their interpretations of teachers' written comments and what factors influenced their readings of teachers' comments. Subjects, 8 students enrolled in the first semester writing course at Olivet Nazarene University, a small private liberal arts…

College composition teachers face serious difficulties with student anger in trying to teach writing to poorly prepared students who do not see the need for learning standard English. Most teachers would agree that they are trying to teach writing in a much harsher, less receptive climate produced by powerful social forces over which they have…

A study examined the impact of written feedback on goals and self-efficacy, and the impact of goals and self-efficacy on changes in writing performance. Subjects were 137 students in a second-semester freshman-level college English composition class and 5 second-semester graduate assistant teachers. Consistent with social learning theory, results…

Australia's process for quality child care improvement has 20 core principles, 4 of which relate to interactions between children and staff: (1) staff interactions with children should be warm and friendly; (2) all children should be treated equally, and their individual needs and backgrounds should be respected; (3) both sexes should be treated…

A taxonomy of teacher responses to pupils' connected reading was developed to characterize the instructional decisions and development of teacher interactions with individual readers. In developing this instrument, content analysis procedures were used to investigate actual teacher responses to readers. The X axis (reading categories) of the…

This study focused on the topic of home visits from the teacher's perspective. A survey was distributed among 40 teachers who were randomly selected from New York City schools. These teachers were from Head Start, day care settings, and public and private schools. The survey focused on whether teachers find home visits to be an effective tool in…

This study, begun in October 1987, was conducted to explore the effect of particular contexts of schooling on educational outcomes and to provide a comprehensive look at what and how context conditions affect teaching and learning. The study design integrates 3 years of field research in 16 public and private high schools in 2 states and analyses…

A study of two teachers and four secondary level English classes examined how traditional methods of teaching literature were replaced by more interactive and integrated approaches to text, based primarily upon a whole language philosophy. Intervention aspects purposely remained open-ended to accommodate each teacher's understandings and…

This paper compares and contrasts cases of three beginning teachers, graduates of a teacher education program that included an intervention component designed to change prospective elementary teachers' knowledge and beliefs about mathematics education. The goal of the intervention (a sequence of three mathematics courses, a methods course, and a…

A questionnaire entitled "An Inquiry into Classroom Practices in the Teaching of Writing" was sent to 222 authorities comprising two groups: those who have published a work in the form of a book or monograph under the auspices of the National Council of Teachers of English since 1963, and those who have held administrative positions in…

In order to compare the differences in cognitions of experienced and beginning teachers, the perceptions of six experienced teachers, six student teachers, and six probationer teachers (in their first year of teaching after college training) were studied at various times during the course of a school year, using a variety of methods (interview,…

A study sought: (1) to discover the size of the physical education curriculum gap between theory and practice by determining the percentage of the schools studied used recommended procedures; (2) to determine if school size had any influence on teachers using recommended procedures; (3) to discover the size of the theory practice gap by…

The educational assessment movement holds considerable promise for encouraging college faculty to exercise collective responsibility to improve the quality of learning. Current efforts toward improving higher education include the Association of American Colleges' report, "Integrity in the College Curriculum"; William J. Bennett's…

This practicum implemented a quality circle approach with the English faculty of a large public high school to devise and synthesize practical methods of evaluating student writing into a collection or handbook. The target group, 14 English instructors who indicated on a pre-practicum survey various degrees of frustration with their school's…