Science fairs are held in many elementary, junior high, and high schools. Typically they are thought of as a competitive event where students display science projects. Publications occasionally print accounts of successful science fairs, but these articles are usually based on opinions rather than on research. The purpose of this study is to…

A study was conducted to examine motivation as a precursor of reading achievement in middle school students. The California Media and Education Librarians' Literature Reading Survey (1984) was used as the instrument for collection of data. Sixth graders (n=753) of varying ability were studied in six different settings. Data were coded in 10 ethnic…

Two experiments investigated the role of children's assessments of their performance on their decisions to seek help and their preferences for different types of assistance. Blocked into low and high verbal skill groups, participants in study 1 were 84 middle-class third- and fifth-grade elementary school students. Subjects performed a multi-trial…

One teacher's experience with traditional language tests suggested that the tests did not reflect the kind of communicative language learning going on in the classroom and might be counterproductive. As a result, an experiment in oral testing was undertaken in which examinees were required to process natural discourse and to relate language to…

Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion and cynicism frequently occurring among human services professionals. Education is one profession whose members are particularly susceptible to burnout. There is a need to identify causes of burnout and possible ameliorative strategies, as perceived by teachers. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), a…

This study investigated the effect of students' entry into the seventh grade versus entry into a new school setting on their perceptions of self-worth, competences, and motivational orientation. Four groups of students were examined longitudinally as they made the transition to a new grade: (1) students who moved from fifth to sixth grade in the…

In order to investigate the efficacy of a decade-long language arts tutoring program, a study compared students' responses to a survey of their participation in and attitudes about the program with their Reading, Language, Math, and Total scores on the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) and other tests. The tutoring program assigned college students…

The effect of participation in interdisciplinary general education programs on personal and professional development of faculty was investigated at Denison University (Ohio), Earlham College (Indiana), and Kenyon College (Ohio). Faculty members teaching interdisciplinary general education courses in these private liberal arts colleges were…

Scholarly productivity of faculty was studied based on the Brim and Wheeler framework of socialization, which takes into account personal and organizational influences on socialization outcomes. Specific influences included norms governing the system, the university's capacity to provide relevant performance opportunities, and the school's…

This report, compiled by the North Carolina State Board of Education's Office for Dropout Prevention, provides dropout data, reasons for students' dropping out of school, and approaches for keeping students in school until successful completion of their education. Facts and figures for dropout rates of high school and the extended day school…

In response to the assertion that reading is a fixed set of processes that can be identified and studied independently of context, a study was initiated based on the following assumptions: that different types of reading (prose comprehension and text search) can be identified and measured, that reading competencies are highly associated with uses…

This practicum addressed the problem of eighth-grade U.S. history students who did not acquire nor retain the necessary course core vocabulary. This lack of vocabulary acquisition resulted in reduced student performance, lack of understanding, and a poor attitude. The goals were: (1) to increase the student's U.S. history core vocabulary level;…

This report includes proceedings from the Family as Educators Conference which aimed (1) to clarify the roles parents have in supporting their children's achievement in literacy and motivation for school learning (i.e., attitudes affecting school work and attendance), and (2) to assess the viability of parents' educative roles in light of current…

The causal relationship among adult literacy, social evolution, and economic development has traditionally made adult literacy programs a priority in developing nations. To develop effective adult literacy programs, educational planners must consider a variety of linguistic, cultural, economic, and political needs. First of all, planners must…

Research conducted in the United States has found that people exert more effort when they perform a task individually than when they do so in a group. This phenomenon has been labeled social loafing. To examine the transcultural generality of social loafing, 20 male and 20 female Chinese school children in Taiwan were selected from grades 2, 3, 6,…