This paper describes an introductory teacher education course designed to challenge prospective teachers' beliefs about schooling, teaching, and learning, formed as a result of personal experience. The instructor encountered problems in attempting both to engage his students' existing beliefs about teaching and learning and to encourage their…

This study investigated the influences of prior life and employment history on the thinking and practice of beginning, second-career elementary and secondary school teachers. Data were drawn from classroom observations, journal writing, and open-ended informal interviews; case studies were then developed illustrating the impact of personal and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate some variables that relate to students' anxiety in learning statistics. The variables included sex, class level, students' achievement, school, mathematical background, previous statistics courses, and race. The instrument used was the 24-item Students' Attitudes Toward Statistics (STATS), which was…

This study provides a description and analysis of how teachers read research in light of prior beliefs about what research is and how it should influence teaching. Attention to teachers' beliefs has become an essential feature of studies designed to help understand research. The beliefs on which researchers and teacher educators typically focus…

A number of strategies, informed by science education research, have been identified to assist the understanding and communication of difficult concepts in science. A teacher's craft lies in creating learning experiences that facilitate concept development and challenge misconceptions from which students actively build, modify, and extend their…

A discussion of language testing looks at the relationship between the processes of language learning and language testing, particularly from the point of view of pragmatics theory. It outlines some of the theory of Charles Sanders Pierce and its role in the evolution of linguistic theory, as well as the work of other theorists concerning the…

Instructional simulation is a type of computer assisted instruction that is effective for teaching dynamic skills. Control of instructional simulation may be fully automated (computer control), assigned to learners (learner controlled instruction), or control may be shared between computer and learner (learner control with advisement). The…

Issues in preservice preparation of Canadian school administrators, with a focus on the effectiveness of a principal certification course implemented by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), are described. A review of current preservice practices in Canada concludes that traditional programs are issues oriented and lack conceptual…

A study examined (1) a nine-year-old girl's view of writing, (2) the factors contributing to the construction of that view, (3) her parents' and teacher's views, and (4) the relationship among these various views. Both samples of writing and an interview schedule were used to elicit writing views from each of the participants concerning their…

Noting that both the structural characteristics of television and the characteristics of the viewer may influence comprehension of television news, a study tested the hypothesis that the synchronous presentation of television news will maximize learning for viewers with low prior knowledge of program content. Synchronous and nonsynchronous…

With the use of verbal report strategies, a study was conducted to examine (1) the types of comprehension strategies readers use to process familiar and less familiar texts and (2) the differential use of think aloud strategies by average and below average readers. Subjects were 15 tenth grade male students in upstate New York. Two weeks prior to…

A two-part study investigated the effects of a text adjunct on poor readers' recall and comprehension. The text adjunct, a thematic organizer, was designed to define explicitly the central theme of a passage, relate the theme to students' prior knowledge, and provide cohesion among the ideas of the passage to accommodate text structure. Subjects…

This study investigated the relationship of the effects of library staff attitudes toward computer technology on their level of participation in a library computer literacy program. A series of in-service computer workshops at the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries provided the opportunity to investigate computer anxiety among library…

The effectiveness of three instructional approaches was investigated in a study of how best to facilitate vocabulary acquisition. The three approaches were (1) the cognitive approach, a method employing dictionary worksheets and patterned after the most commonly used method of teaching vocabulary; (2) the affective approach, which urged students…

This volume provides a cumulative review of the primary methods used or available for use in recording formal training experiences and an annotated bibliography of documents relating to the accreditation of training experiences. The literature review begins with a discussion of academic documentation, that is, the record of formal training…