The five essays in this collection examine the ways in which language functions in the lives of children, particularly in contexts outside the classroom. The first essay attempts to relate the actual language of children and adolescents to the rather different language characteristic of teachers and schools. The second essay examines the language…

Twenty college age males' hand shrugs, face-play manipulations, and frequency and duration of mutual eye contact were recorded in response to a female counterpart who varied her assertiveness and attractiveness in a two by two factorial design. Mutual eye contact, which increased under attractive conditions, was a useful negative correlate of…

Procedures and related issues involved in the application of trait-treatment interaction (TTI) to institutional research, in general, and to placement and proficiency testing, in particular, are discussed and illustrated. Traditional methods for choosing cut-off scores are compared and proposals for evaluating the results in the TTI framework are…

This handbook introduces English teachers to the use of simulation games as a serious method for teaching composition, language, and literature. In the first section, separate chapters discuss the rationale for game-playing; the teacher's role in simulations and ways in which classroom interaction changes when games are used; a step-by-step…

In order to test whether constant eye contact, formal posture, and varied vocal inflection increase source credibility and listener comprehension, 144 college students in an introductory speech communication course were placed in groups of equal size that listened to the same informative speech. The speaker presented to each group a different…

In order to investigate the factors that affect the ability of children to decode and elaborate television information, a study was conducted in which verbal ability, spatial ability, and amount of home television viewing were examined, along with viewer attention and three levels of instruction, for their direct and interactive effects on…

The Classroom Interaction Analysis Index (CIAI) is an instrument developed to categorize the actions of teachers and students as they interact in classroom situations. In the study described, a class of 30 social studies student teachers were divided into teams of five each. Each team taught the same preplanned lesson twice--by illustrated lecture…

The 31 papers selected for presentation at the 1981 Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) convention and inclusion in this document were subjected to a rigorous blind reviewing process and represent some of the most current thinking in educational communications and technology. Topics covered include aptitude treatment…

A study was conducted to examine speech interruption patterns as an index of communication dominance and gender differences in language behavior. Six graduate student groups involving a total of 35 subjects were videotaped. The data extracted for study were 255 transcribed interruption sequences. A category system was developed and used to code…

A review of the research indicates that the interface between the findings from research on teaching and staff development of teachers is an important but neglected one. An improvement in teaching skills calls for an interactive or collaborative mode of professional development which is based on classroom interests and the needs of teachers, with…

The social conflict approach, i.e., any social situation in which social entities are linked by antagonistic social relations, constitutes a viable conceptual framework for studying the family. Increasingly, conflict is viewed as a central characteristic of family life. The social conflict framework can be used to study both social phenomena…

Research has shown causal and correlational links between teacher enthusiasm and student achievement, and between student at-task behavior and student achievement. This study tested the causal link between teacher enthusiasm and student achievement, using teaching as an independent variable and at-task behavior as a dependent variable in…

Forty-two students enrolled in an introductory child development course at the University of Kansas participated in a study which assessed student-instructor interaction in a personalized psychology course. Using Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), the instructor's role was investigated by comparing the number of interactions…

The major purpose of this study was to determine whether certain types of instructional strategies (factor-label method, use of analogies, use of diagrams, and proportionality) were superior to others in teaching problem solving in four topics (mole concept, gas laws, stoichiometry, and molarity). Also of major interest was whether particular…

This study examined student aptitudes and student behaviors during small group interactions as mediators of the effectiveness of small group learning. The hypotheses to be investigated were that the effects of small group learning on student achievement are produced by students' participation in group interaction, and in the providing and…