Currently, in both developed and developing societies, there seems to be something of a "crisis of confidence" regarding the ability of formal professional training programs to impact significantly on teachers' instructional and managerial effectiveness in the classroom. From the Caribbean, this paper reports a small-scale project…

An intern program for teacher trainees at Illinois State University augments the student teaching experience with experience in the surrounding urban community. The urban community experience is used as a vehicle to allow the students to look at their own personal strengths and weaknesses, their willingness to work with others, and their ability…

The factors that influence students' educational aspirations are of critical importance to both teachers and policy makers. To determine how grade eight students in Toronto make the decision whether or not to attend college, 120 inner-city eighth graders and some of their parents, teachers and principals were interviewed. In the second stage of…

This booklet, written for adolescents, focuses on the individual's role and responsibility, both to themselves and their friends, in preventing drug abuse problems. Short statements define the influence of peer pressure on prevention, friendship, and intervention. The results of a ninth grade student survey list 22 reasons for using drugs,…

The influences within the Ontario educational system perceived by teachers, department heads, and principals as affecting their evaluation policies and practices were studied. Interviews were conducted in the 1987-88 school year as part of the Ecology of Evaluation research project conducted in Ontario and British Columbia. About 50 elementary and…

Noting that, in general, collaborative peer writing groups benefit students but that teacher and student preparation would improve the efficacy of collaborative writing method, this bibliography provides detailed information on sources useful for introducing writing students to the vocabulary and terminology of the composition community. Materials…

This study field-tested a decision-making program for groups of 20 at-risk seventh grade students who met for 45 minutes once a week for nine weeks to learn health and physical education, math, English, social studies, science, and decision-making. One hundred and five students, some of whom served as control group by not participating in the…

Race and socioeconomic class differences in children's reading performance are influenced by social and motivational factors. For example, children from poverty backgrounds are more likely to attribute success to conditions outside personal control, and thus do not experience as much pride in achievement as middle class students who have learned…

Through observational studies of 15 preschool and 15 public school first grade classrooms in Tokyo, Japan, an initial understanding of social control through education is presented. While Japanese preschool children are indulged and undisciplined by their parents, evidence suggests that Japanese school children are more attentive and spend less…

Project STAR (Social Thinking and Reasoning Program) is a classroom-based social skills program for students in grades 5-8. To assess the long-term effectiveness of this program, students participated in the project (N=331) were compared with control students (N=191) during 1980-83. The hypothesis that there are significant differences in current…

For a successful transition to adulthood, young people need opportunities to be responsible, caring, participating members of society. A study was designed to test the effectiveness of peer discipline control in seventh grade classrooms. The context was a language arts class in which the students were learning parliamentary procedures. A class…

A cooperative writing workshop that attempts to engage first-term college freshmen in a variety of genuine writing problems by stressing the class as audience, the use of daily journals, feedback from small group discussions, and frequent revision is described in the first part of this document. The remainder of the paper presents a case study of…

In this paper, emphasis is placed on examining the issue of sex differences from a historical perspective, within a framework focused on socialization factors, and within a more psychological framework that examines how society's beliefs and expectations are reflected in personal beliefs that may affect functioning. Biographical details about…

A study tested two hypotheses aimed at explaining the "self-fulfilling prophesy" that results when students are divided into ability group systems. The differential instruction hypothesis explains achievement differentials produced by grouping systems in terms of the differential instruction received by students. The peer differentials…

Reported in this document are the results of three experiments investigating the potential influence of peers in gender-role socialization. Children were exposed to a series of vignettes providing information about target children who varied in their degree of masculinity and femininity. Drawn from third through sixth grades, participants included…