The authors claim that the principal contribution of research on teacher thinking is enrichment of understanding of what teachers know and what teaching entails. Studies of teacher planning, decision making, knowledge, and theorizing can be used to provide prospective teachers with a realistically complex picture of the cognitive aspects of…

Reports, summaries, and recommendations are presented on the following research studies: (1) Beginning Teacher Studies; (2) Instructional Skills for Teaching Higher Order Thinking; (3) Development of the Conferential Observation Instrument; (4) Predictive Validity Studies Conducted to Test the Relationship Between Teacher Performance as Measured…

Teachers do not intentionally use or consider research findings in making teaching decisions. This lack of use is usually blamed on research deficiencies; e.g., educational research does not address the realistic demands of classroom teaching, research findings are inconsistent, and research articles are difficult to obtain and read. A major…

The results of a survey of 400 randomly selected principals from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland appear to validate a newly developed instrument for measuring three factors: the depth of principals' interests in information developed through educational research, the extent to which these principals exhibit rational approaches to…

A detailed report is given on the mechanics involved in conducting a successful bi-regional workshop for educators. The theme of the workshop was designed around two Research Within Reach (RWR) documents dealing with oral/written communications and secondary mathematics; however, papers and discussion generated by the workshop are not included in…

The author critically reviews recent suggestions from Buchmann, Fenstermacher, and Zumwalt that teachers draw their own conclusions from research findings, rather than accepting the conclusions researchers draw. Drawing on Gusfield's analysis of the language of social science, the author considers the suggestions as proposals for the rhetoric that…

This document is the proceedings of a statewide conference on the family sponsored by the Family Study Center and the Office of University Extension, Oklahoma State University. Participants and resource persons from eight states and 39 communities came together to consider new options for families as they face the adversities of a world with a…

This study reports on attempts to involve forty British teachers in a program of research into implementing inquiry/discovery approaches to teaching in classrooms, following the failure of a previous curriculum reform movement at the implementation stage. It was hypothesized that a fundamental problem of curriculum reform lies in the clash between…

A needs assessment effort was undertaken by a local school system in response to a state of Iowa mandate to aid in the development of long-range responses to program needs. All teachers of the Grinnell Community School District were asked to respond to the 50-item questionnaire "Instructional Assessment Instrument" (included in the document). Part…

The author provides a macroview of the educational linking agent from the perspective of the National Institute of Education (NIE) and discusses the learning emerging from the Research and Development Utilization (RDU) Program of NIE concerning the uses of linking agents. The growth of NIE interest in the linking agent role is discussed.…

This paper deals with the Community Legal Services law suit and the role played by a large city office of research and evaluation in bringing about its resolution. This law suit was waged on behalf of the Welfare Rights organization against the State Department of Education and, most directly upon the recipient of state-managed Title I funds, a…

Government funded research is approaching 60 percent of the total research conducted in this country and is still growing as a percentage of the total. The government patent policy during the 1960s and 1970s is briefly outlined and shown as permitting the agencies to use their discretion to determine whether or not the normal incentives of the…

Addressing the problems of cross-research analysis, two Federal Interagency Panels have recommended that researchers: 1) use more complete definitions of the variables used in their study; 2) be more precise in their descriptions of populations; and 3) insure that their methodology and research lends itself to a comparability review. (BJG)

This users' manual, intended for use with a Project Head Start teacher training notebook, describes the purpose, development and field testing of the training materials and suggests procedures for using the notebook as a resource in teacher training sessions. The training notebook to which the users' manual refers is based on 11 questions in the…