Considerable research has documented the positive effect of teacher expressiveness and warmth on students' evaluations of college teachers, but the effect of teacher expressiveness on student performance is less clear. To investigate the interaction between teacher expressiveness, teacher sex, and student sex, 121 college students viewed a…

Typical learned helplessness research has involved the presentation of non-contingent, aversive events followed by measures of performance on subsequent tasks; recent investigations have focused on the effect of non-contingent rewards. To examine the effects of non-contingent rewards on children, two studies were conducted, in which children were…

This experiment tested the hypothesis that the sequence of ability and effort attributional feedback influences children's attributions, self-efficacy, and skillful performance. Children deficient in subtraction skills received training on subtraction operations and solved problems over four sessions. During the problem solving, some children…

Gagne proposed in his learning hierarchy model that a final task could not be performed by an individual who does not have the subordinate skills, and that any superordinate task involved in the hierarchy of skill building could be performed by an individual provided suitable instructions were given, and provided the relevant subordinate knowledge…

The Achievement Based Curriculum (ABC) is a process for training teachers how to plan, assess, prescribe, teach, and evaluate instruction for all children. Project I CAN is a research database designed and organized to be used by physical educators and classroom teachers. The materials cover the scope (preprimary through secondary) and essential…

The role of content in formal operations tasks was explored in research that systematically varied the content of tasks and children's performance by developmental level and socioeconomic status (SES). Subjects were 110 Icelandic 12-year-olds who had entered a longitudinal study when they were 7 years old. Two extreme ability groups of children…

This research brief reviews selected 1986 publications concerning the effects of class size on student achievement, attitudes, and behavior. The following points are made: (1) smaller classes in the lower grades have a positive effect on student learning attitudes and behavior; (2) minority, disadvantaged, and low-achieving students perform better…

Samples of 17 male and 31 female first graders, 26 male and 22 female third graders, 23 male and 25 female fifth graders, 21 male and 27 female ninth graders, and 18 male and 30 female college students predicted their ability to recall sets of items that varied in number of items presented and presence or absence of categorization. The aim was to…

This study was conducted to relate personal, cognitive, and school variables to physics achievement. The sample consisted of 435 students participating in the 1985 Mississippi State University Annual Physics Competition. The Student Background Questionnaire was planned and developed to collect information on each variable examined. The predictor…

The literature on the partial determinants of performance in organizational contexts, particularly the research on situational determinants, suggests several different variables which may be of importance to appraisal processes as well. This point may be exemplified with regard to the situational factors of task ease/difficulty and situational…

Peak performance in the death crisis as a critical incident of creative response to the awareness of one's own or another person's death is the concern of this report. The topology of peak performance in the death crisis was examined in an investigation of retrospective self-reports of 20 adult respondents and a factor structure of peak…

The results of six major projects are discussed including a comprehensive mathematical and statistical analysis of the problems caused by errors of measurement in linear models for assessing change. In a general matrix representation of the problem, several new analytic results are proved concerning the parameters which affect bias in…

A study was conducted to investigate the success of women contestants in Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) debate. The study sought to determine whether (1) CEDA is a more attractive debate activity for women, (2) men are more successful in CEDA debate than women, (3) the gender mix of debate teams favors all-male teams over all-female…

This study attempted to identify specific social environmental factors of the home that are related to science achievement at the primary school level and to determine the extent of the relationships between achievement in science and the factors identified. A sample of 200 subjects were given three instruments in a group setting, a mental ability…

The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of the idea of measurement of pupil growth and achievement as a criterion of teacher effectiveness through the scholarly writings of A. S. Barr (1892-1962). The search for the criterion of teacher efficiency, and later effectiveness, was the professional concern that guided Barr's research for…