Elementary school teachers were trained in specific classroom behaviors designed to improve student achievement. Effects of the training were measured primarily in terms of academic outcomes for underachievers; outcomes for normal and overachieving students were also examined. In addition to a focus upon achievement, the study was also designed to…

The Assessments of Performance in Teaching (APT), presented here, is a classroom teacher performance evaluation procedure mandated by the South Carolina Legislature for all student and first year teachers, and will be implemented in 1982. Aiming to measure minimal competence, the instrument addresses five performance dimensions: planning;…

Regular classroom teachers who, in addition to teaching their regular students, have to deal with students who do not speak English should follow certain principles in planning curricula and lessons for their non-English speaking students. These teachers should (1) distinguish formal classroom talk from informal talk; (2) allow opportunities for…

This paper describes a college course in the Human Science Approach (HSA) to psychology offered in seminar format. The importance of instructor-student equality and feedback is emphasized and lecture sessions are described in which students are encouraged to interrupt for questions and discussions. The major goal of the course is described as…

A study of the written language that was produced within one junior high school social studies classroom over a 38-minute period was based on the assumptions that (1) written language is not only affected by the context of the communicative event in which it is involved, but is also involved in the construction of the communicative event; (2) the…

Noting that teachers' nonverbal behaviors are frequently inconsistent with their verbal messages, a situation that detracts from student learning, this paper offers an activity for focusing prospective teachers' attentions on the frequency and impact of discrepant verbal-nonverbal messages occurring in the classroom. The step-by-step process is…

Perhaps the most controversial and provocative issue in the discussion of reading failure in inner-city schools has been the relationship between Black English Vernacular (BEV), reading failure, and reading instruction. The debate has focused on the degree to which BEV does or does not interfere with the acquisition of reading/language arts…

The purpose of this paper is to report progress on the development of an observation instrument useful in characterizing the communication between teacher and student during oral reading instruction. The paper is divided into five major sections: (1) an overview of oral reading instruction at primary levels, (2) a theoretical perspective for…

THIS REPORT DESCRIBES AN EFFORT TO DEVELOP A MODEL FOR TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, PARTICULARLY THOSE HAVING LARGE NUMBERS OF SOCIALLY, ECONOMICALLY AND EDUCATIONALLY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN. THRITY-TWO SUBPROFESSIONAL TEACHING ASSISTANTS, MOSTLY POOR AND FROM MINORITY GROUPS, WERE EMPLOYED AND TRAINED TO HELP CHILDREN LEARN.…

This manual for elementary school teachers discusses the stages of social reasoning and suggests methods for establishing a classroom and school-wide community to aid students in social reasoning and self-governance. The document contains five sections. Section one focuses on the stages of social reasoning according to William Damon: premoral…

Noting that language should be a vital area of concern for anyone interested in speech communication, this paper focuses on the concern for language in the classroom as it is discussed in speech communication literature. Selected studies from the more extensive literature on educational practices are also cited. Programs in which language is…

Many issues relating to the teaching of language across the curriculum (LAC) are considered in this paper. Among the topics discussed are: (1) language development as a goal of teaching; (2) the use of language activities, including exploratory talking and writing, as a means of learning; (3) issues in which teachers might interest themselves to…

Investigators wrote proposals for research on the nature and learning of communicative processes in the elementary classroom. Three questions were addressed: (1) What is the nature of communication in the classroom? (2) How do students acquire the rules of classroom discourse? (3) What is the effect of inadequate learning of classroom discourse…

A packet of three speech assessment instruments has been organized to assist classroom teachers in creating instructional programs that provide adequate oral/aural language experiences for their students. The Koziol-Cercone Assessment of Speaking Skills judges student ability to orally communicate the content of a message. The Koziol-Cercone…

This research study delineates some of the factors in classroom communication involved in the process of classroom interaction in the elementary schools and explores the psychological relevance of some matters brought up in ordinary language philosophy and modern linguistics. Samples of classroom speech were collected from twenty grade school…