Presents results of a mail survey of sales managers. The survey asked three questions: (1) What organizational factors are adversely affecting your performance as sales manager? (2) What factors are adversely affecting your salespeoples' performance? and (3) What skills do you personally need to improve? (CSS)

Education majors preparing to be secondary school teachers could participate in a pre-student teacher field experience teaching project. Project participants had higher self-concepts at the end of student teaching than their nonparticipating counterparts. Field experience was not related to higher ratings of student teaching performance. (GDC)

The relationship of teachers' allocation of time to individual student achievement was studied. It was concluded that teachers prefer to increase students' average achievement rather than to decrease the variance in achievement within the classroom. (MH)

The study investigated the effects of interspersing known items during spelling instruction on new words for three moderately to severely mentally retarded male students (ages 19 to 24). Results showed that high density reinforcement did facilitate performance over baseline; however, interspersal training was superior to the other conditions in…

Maintaining "locus of control" is a significant variable for educators, human resource personnel, and employment counselors dealing with the chronically unemployed, or the underemployed disadvantaged or handicapped workers, this article describes 10 techniques related to change of locus of control and development of more responsible and successful…

A theory of motivation based upon attributions of causality for success and failure is offered. Three central causal dimensions are identified: stability, locus, and control; these dimensions, respectively, are linked with expectancy change, esteem-related emotions, and interpersonal judgments. A theory of motivation with implications for…

A survey of 859 school psychologists who indicated prior experience conducting bilingual psychoeducational assessment identified 36 factors used to comply with provisions in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act relating to assessing bilingual or limited-English-proficient students. Seventeen additional factors that were overlooked and…

Forty children (ages five to nine) with or without reading disabilities, matched for mental age or reading age, completed a phoneme-grapheme learning task. Reading-disabled children took more trials than controls to learn correspondence pairs. Performance on the phonological processing task of short-term memory was the best predictor of overall…

Discusses research findings in relation to oral communication tasks in English. The article concludes that, although direct linkage between task type, language output, and language acquisition has not been established, informed pedagogic choices can be made using the concepts of control of information and communication goal. (22 references)…

Examines the extent to which foreign language use should play a prominent part in a course. The article discusses subject knowledge; factors affecting students' language skills; course objectives, structure and content; student reaction to questions about tutor input and the topics appropriate for teaching in the foreign language; and perceived…

This article provides an overview of important family and environmental factors that affect early development of infants and children with Down syndrome. It concludes that a moderately directive parenting style combined with sensitive, responsive, and reciprocal interactions, embedded in a general stimulating environment, are favorable to the…

A study used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988-1994 to compare postsecondary outcomes among 7,007 students with and without disabilities who participated in secondary vocational education. Students with disabilities who participated in vocational education earned more wages than peers with disabilities who did not…

Assessed fourth, seventh, and tenth graders' social reasoning about exclusion in three social contexts: friendship, peer, and school. Found that there were significant patterns of reasoning about exclusion for the context, the target of exclusion, and the degree to which social influence, authority expectations, and cultural norms explained…

Discusses factors that contribute to students with learning disabilities having difficulty acquiring and retaining math skills. Factors include national reform movements that have influenced math instruction, inclusion, characteristics of students with learning disabilities, and poor mathematics curricula and instruction. Recommendations for…

The experiences of five gifted black males in a predominantly white university setting were examined. Significant factors that influenced their achievement included influential mothers, recognition of giftedness, and support from significant teachers and mentors. Additional factors included involvement in extracurricular activities and positive…