The effectiveness of videotape feedback, verbal feedback, and a combination of videotape and verbal feedback upon the psychomotor performance of 90 borderline, mild, and moderately retarded adolescent students in a residential school was compared. The students were divided into a high intelligence group and a low intelligence group and then…

This study sought to determine if an instructor of a competency-based course who sets performance standards at a comparatively low level might facilitate higher levels of student achievement through the use of written comments on unit posttests. Eighty-eight students in a graduate education course were randomly assigned to one of four experimental…

The effects of the availability of behaviorally stated objectives on the learning process were studied. It was hypothesized that objectives would serve as orienting stimuli which would help students to attend to, process, and organize relevant aspects of displayed information in accordance with stated objectives. Therefore, the presentation of…

The effectiveness of positive and negative evaluative comments for children's learning was assessed in a two-choice discrimination task. Results indicate that negative comments after incorrect responses greatly facilitated learning while positive comments after correct responses had little effect. To explain the findings, a naturalistic analysis…

In 1966, the Department of Defense lowered entrance standards for military service. Many of the 'New Standards' men who then entered the service were placed in remedial training programs (Army Preparatory training, APT), designed to upgrade their literacy status to a fifth-grade level or higher. The research sought to determine whether success in…

This research project represents an attempt to capitalize on the study opportunity provided by the simultaneous operation of seven teacher training programs by one institution and to cope with problems which normally have plagued teacher training program evaluation efforts: lack of validation of performance criteria, nonequivalence of trainees in…

Reported are five studies related to the effects of a token reinforcement system based upon principles of operant conditioning on academic performance of trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children, conducted over a 9-month period in an entire school for TMR students. Study 1 investigated the effects of a school-wide reinforcement program on…

Evaluation activities should always be considered in terms of the effect that they have on the persons or programs being evaluated. This is a particularly critical concept when young children are being evaluated. Evaluation should be of some value to the persons or programs being evaluated. For example, when a Follow Through program is being…

Research examined the hypothesis that predictive validity would be greater for a test given under stress instructions than for a test given under relax instructions. Ss were 254 education students in a graduate measurement course and 117 education students in an undergraduate measurement course. Ss were randomly assigned to the instructional…

Conducted as a research project in vocational education under Part C of Public Law 90-576, the primary goal of this study was to develop and test a model for the study of the process of job creation, job training, and job placement in the community context. Personal interviews with community leaders, agency representatives, and major employers in…

Several alternative indexes of item usefulness were empirically compared. They were: (1) item discrimination based on high and low groups on a postinstructional measure, (2) shift in item difficulty from a pre- to a postinstruction measure, and (3) item discrimination based on pre- and posttest performances. A typical classroom final examination…

The two techniques for improving the quality of programed instruction, empirical revision, and the presentation of objectives before instruction were tested by this experiment in order to obtain a systematic replication of former experimental results. This study was designed to investigate: whether the presentation of the specific objectives…

AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SUCH VARIABLES AS TYPE OF MATERIAL, NUMBER OF RELEVANT ATTRIBUTES, AND PERFORMANCE OF A PERSON ATTAINING CONCEPTS. CONCEPT ATTAINMENT BOARDS OF THE BRUNER (1956) TYPE WERE USED, AND VARIOUS PARAMETERS CONTAINED IN THE BOARDS WERE MANIPULATED. THE NUMBER OF RELEVANT AND…

Forth-two elementary school children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) were tutored on a one-to-one basis by junior high volunteers (Grades 6, 7, and 8) for 12 weeks. Prior to the start of the tutoring program and following an experimental tutoring session in which tutee performance and feedback were manipulated, both the elementary and secondary students…

A stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed in order to explore the possibility of predicting the quality of a counselor's performance from the values of five predictor variables. The opportunity to make such predictions could prove useful to Deans of Students in making decisions concerning personnel deployment, in-service training,…