Encourages and guides teachers in utilizing direct praise of students to increase performance and self confidence, and to build positive self esteem. Details specific language habits, gestures, and methods for teachers to identify their behaviors, critical remarks, and evaluative terms, and replace them with feedback that reinforces correct…

Elementary school teachers' negative perceptions of parents in Villefleurie, France are explored. Teachers see parents as "natural enemies" and criticize all categories of parents to different degrees. Contributing factors include role conflict, class conflict, local history, and teachers' need to ascribe blame for academic or behavioral…

Asserts that, in an economic environment that threatens music programs, elementary music educators must reexamine their role in schools and work toward creating a program that is considered too necessary to cut. Discusses the history of music education and suggests approaches for keeping the program alive. (CFR)

Reviews the social studies goal of citizenship education. Describes the goals, instructional techniques, evaluation methods, and classroom management strategies used in the Mississippi Freedom Schools during the middle 1960s. Contends that these schools could be used as a model for effective social studies instruction today. (CFR)

Supportive learning activities were implemented in a multiple-baseline time series design across four fifth-grade classrooms to evaluate the effects of a cooperative teaching alternative (supportive learning) on teaching behavior, the behavior and grades of general and special education students, and the opinions of general education teachers.…

Maintains that the traditional role of standards in elementary curriculum development is that of asking important questions regarding quality curriculum design and instruction. Presents seven questions to guide teachers as they utilize the standards. (CFR)

Reviews research on the relationship among young children, their developing skills, and art. Maintains that children's development, like art itself, grows out of the individual child artist and his or her place in life and culture. Presents examples of developmentally appropriate art activities and instruction. (CFR)

Reports on a study of how engenderment (socialization to gender) operates in both male and female single-sex and coeducational independent schools. Finds that teachers initiated most of the incidents in six categories of sex discrimination. Asserts that schools with active gender equity policies were the least likely sites of sexism. (CFR)

Reports on a study about the influence of different writing tools and classroom environments on students' writing processes and achievement. Finds that using computers rather than pen-and-paper writing was less teacher dominated and more student independent. Discusses implications of the study. (CFR)

Asserts that citizenship education has been acknowledged as one of the overarching goals of social studies. Contends that citizenship education and cooperative learning are interrelated concepts and that social studies teachers and students can benefit from using cooperative learning techniques. (CFR)

Describes a two-year, collaborative, university-school district teacher induction program in which beginning teachers' classroom performance was assessed using a behavioral observation instrument. Participants made significant gains, with first-year gains resulting from improvements in classroom organization and second-year gains related to…

Contends that teachers as well as students function in a gender-biased environment. Asserts that the history and social studies curriculum regularly is taught in a patriarchal manner and that this denial of the past is harmful to young women and men. Questions whether or not a scholarly backlash against women has begun. (CFR)

Contends that the attainment targets of the first draft of the National Curriculum for Art neglect art appreciation and limit rather than liberate children's creative powers. Concludes that the biggest concern is how to reconcile the demand for a tighter curriculum structure with the need to preserve an important place for personal spontaneity.…

Asserts that art teachers must understand current learning theory and implement new cognitive concepts to provide the best art education for K-12 students. Reviews major ideas in cognitive learning theory, focusing on the idea that thinking is domain, or content, specific. (CFR)

Effects of the involvement, classroom structure, and autonomy support of 14 teachers on the behavioral and emotional engagement of 144 third through fifth graders were studied across a school year. Results suggest that behaviorally disengaged students receive teacher responses that should further undermine motivation. (SLD)