Describes career education activity, "Student as Worker," in which elementary school children pretend school is their job and respond to questions about what is expected of them on the job as students. Responses are related to factors considered important in most jobs, such as punctuality, appropriate attire, hard work and effort, competency,…

Examines the relations of levels of task engagement to investigation and visual attention in data from 30-month-old children. Finds significant correlations between task and other mastery behavior. Postulates task engagement as valid assessment of mastery behavior. Suggests the motivation for young children's play is acquisition and mastery of…

A total of 60 children four-, five-, and six-years-old were assigned to memory or control groups and told they could play with toys. Mnemonic mediators were identified on the basis of differences in the behavior of children given memory and play instructions. Use of mnemonic mediators differentiated groups at all ages and increased with age. (RH)

Four young children with severe and moderate handicaps were taught to generalize play responses. Across the four participants, training to generalize within-toy sets resulted in complete between-class generalization in 11 sets, partial generalization in 3 sets, and no generalization in 2 sets. (Author/CL)

When the "mantle of the expert" system of teaching is used in drama, the teacher assumes a fictional role which places the student in the position of being the expert. In this project, students were historians/anthropologists charged with the responsibility of creating a Bronze Age community. (MT)

Because of the close interrelationship among language, thinking, and the contexts in which learning takes place, many children experience difficulties when they enter school. This article discusses ways in which dramatic contexts can provide continuity between home and school by enabling children to take control of their thinking and language. (MT)

This article describes ways in which the dramatic context can provide children with a purpose for writing. When writing is integrated with drama, children can reflect on a problem by expressing their thoughts and feelings in different forms ranging from the personal and private to the more formal and public. (MT)

Traditionally, classroom drama is a safe literary activity that involves students in reading or writing scripts. The newer methods that have the students out of their seats improvising drama require training that few teachers have had. Current teacher training methods are described, and alternative methods are suggested. (MT)

Twenty profoundly retarded children (mean chronological age 14 years) were trained to play with ordinary toys, half by behavior modification and half by a control procedure. Operant training led to some increases in total toy contact but was not significantly more effective than the control technique in promoting independent constructive play.…

A five-year-old, severely handicapped boy was trained to activate an adapted battery-operated and electronically controlled toy. Training involved the use of verbal and three different types of physical prompts. Among findings were that physical prompting was effective in rapidly establishing the response and the response was later also performed…

Mixed dyads of attention deficit disorders (ADD) and normal boys were videotaped in free play, cooperative task and simulated classrooms. (Author/NH)

The study investigated the relationship between symbolic play and language performance for 20 young hearing-impaired children. Results indicate a significant difference in symbolic play between 20 young hearing impaired children in two ordinal communication levels. Additionally, there was a strong positive relationship observed between the…

Explores two widely held beliefs that conflict with available evidence: (1) handicapped children don't play and (2) play is a good way for handicapped children to pass the time. Concludes by proposing that play can help handicapped children learn. (RH)

Discusses aspects of the play environment and its effect on children's play behavior. Indoor and outdoor play spaces are considered along with factors affecting the use of outdoor environments for play. Children's preferences for different outdoor play environments and for various play structures are explored. Guides for choosing play equipment…

Research is cited on methods to teach, generalize, and evaluate social interaction skills to handicapped children through specific systematic instruction that considers prompts, praise, training settings, time of day, teacher role, student grouping, and nature of activities. (CL)