The structure and quality of classroom interaction and the ways in which children learn how to interact appropriately was the initial focus of the research and field work described in this paper. The site was a kindergarten/first grade class in a suburban Boston Title I elementary school with many students from second and third generation…

The purpose of this study was to test an experimental plan for improving attendance and achievement in an urban high school in order to determine its effects on the students. The plan for improving achievement and attendance was designed specifically to work effectively with the problems of inadequate student accountability, poor motivation within…

The analysis reported here examined the progress of observational child study from 1960 through 1975. Naturalistic observational studies were described as heuristic, highly realistic, relevant to important social problems and oriented toward significant theoretical issues. Fifteen journals encompassing child development, clinical and educational…

A critical review of educational and social psychological literature was undertaken in order to clarify the impact of schools' control orientation on student learning and on the teacher-student relationship. The propositions argued are (a) a strong control orientation is incompatible with helping students become responsible young adults, (b) the…

Specific criteria for the rating of each questionnaire item are stated in detail. The teacher is asked, after reading the questions carefully, to assign each second grade student a rating for every question. This rating should be based on a personal knowledge of the student. The booklet is divided into three sections with section 1 focusing on…

The abridged questionnaire used to gather the data for "Measuring Human-Relations Attitudes and Values with Situational Inventories" is presented. Its contents are 10 problematic situations that might be faced in an elementary or high school classroom. Following each situation there is a list of possible alternatives that a teacher might take.…

The expanding complexities of American society and the demands placed upon educating American youth are causing the trainers of teachers to give increasing attention to developing innovative methods for improving teacher education. Since there is a lack of information concerning cognitive processes in the classroom and the effects of cognitive…

The School Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) is a 105-item, multiple-choice instrument designed to measure five aspects of anxiety behavior: 1) Recitation Anxiety; 2) Test Anxiety; 3) Report Card Anxiety; 4) Achievement Anxiety; and 5) Failure Anxiety. The five scales are typically 13 or 14 items in length and have reliability in the middle to high…

The longrange goal of the Instructional Tasks Project is to determine the requirements for an effective community-school communication model and its implementation. In the project's first year, the critical incident technique was used to identify the specific behavioral concerns of the community served by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District,…

A teacher's developing awareness of his college students' dependence on jargon as the expression of their culture is portrayed with the aid of quotations from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Parallels are drawn between Prufrock's attitudes and student language in the classroom. (AF)

This study was designed to determine whether viewing and discussing five movies, each depicting a different pattern of supervisory behavior, would enable maladjusted students to react more favorably to supervision. Patterns of behavior were: (1) consideration of employees, (2) structuring expectations, (3) tolerance of freedom of action, (4)…

The enactment of ESEA Title I in 1965, resulting in a flood of new programs, provided fertile grounds for doctoral dissertation research on the education of the disadvantaged. The ERIC/IRCD staff, believing that much could be learned about doctoral research itself, about children, and about educational programs, decided to attempt to provide…

The first phase of the study was a 2 x 2 factorial design, with locus of control and instructional method (lecture and demonstration) as independent variables and honor point average (HPA) as the dependent variable. The second phase used correlational techniques to test the extent to which reading performance and traditional predictors of…

The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a self-report, group-administered, non-verbal inventory to measure Self Perception In School (SPS) among primary grade children. Inventory items were based on Sarbin's Role Theory. Since role may be studied in terms of the actions expected of an occupant of that position, the role of student…

An 80-item rating scale, drawn from faculty descriptions of students, was completed by 407 faculty for 398 students in 8 institutions to ascertain desirable traits beyond those directly related to academic achievement. The items, including a student desirability variable, together with SAT scores, high school rank, and freshman grade point…