Discusses ways of providing training for educators in the operation and instructional applications of microcomputers on a large scale basis, and draws on the experiences of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) for examples of successful networking activities. (Author/MER)

The physical abuse of children by their parents is a family matter and should be viewed within the context of the family unit. Discusses methodological considerations and parent-related aspects of abusing families, including: characteristics, childhood experiences, and marital relationships of abusing parents. (Author)

Provides description, materials needed, and suggestions for the teacher for three classroom sessions and an extension of a unit studying individual portraits and photographs of early Americans and discussing possible characteristics of the people and their place in American history. (CK)

Education majors preparing to be secondary school teachers could participate in a pre-student teacher field experience teaching project. Project participants had higher self-concepts at the end of student teaching than their nonparticipating counterparts. Field experience was not related to higher ratings of student teaching performance. (GDC)

Two sources of inconsistency were separated by reanalyzing data from a major study on short-term consistency. Little evidence was found for generalizability or behavioral predictability. Results supported the assumption that measurement error from short-term fluctuations is not due to systematic individual differences in response consistency.…

Concludes that Blacks who are socially aware of life on the streets in the inner city are most likely to be nonusers of mental health services. (Author)

This directed qualitative research project concentrated on an instructional designer's expert qualities and their interrelatedness to interpersonal dynamics with faculty in terms of the role the instructional designer plays. The designer's personal practical theories and their relationships to his/her effectiveness as an instructional designer are…

A study examined the role of coping style attributions and emotions in response to challenging behavior in predicting helping behaviors of 33 support staff of people with mental retardation. Coping styles of practical problem solving and wishful thinking and attributions of controllability and internality were significant predictors of effort in…

The roles of cognitive, perceptual, visual-motor, behavioral, achievement, and demographic factors in nonpromotion at kindergarten were examined for 34 nonpromoted and 34 promoted kindergarten children. Retained children were more likely to be young, male, and of lower socioeconomic status. Implications for interventions to assist retained…

Follow-up of 972 children for 6 months after sexual victimization found that those children most likely to enter therapy were Caucasian, between the ages of 7 and 13, had cases in which the Department of Children's Services of Los Angeles or law enforcement were involved, were placed outside the home, and experienced abuse of greater frequency.…

Presents reasons and specific "how to" information for increasing the comfort level and learning possibilities for toddlers. Notes that toddler-sensitive child care recognizes that toddlers are distinct from infants and from preschoolers in terms of developmental characteristics. Lists characteristics of toddlers, ways to make child-care…

Parental compliance to court-ordered assessment was examined in mothers whose children had been removed from the home because of maltreatment. Noncompliant mothers (n=30) tended to be younger, to lead more transient lifestyles, to show a greater degree of antisocial behavior, and to experience more violence in their spousal relationships than…

Examined the role of individual characteristics and peer influences in evoking early substance abuse in young boys. Individual characteristics, such as fighting, hyperactivity, oppositional behaviors, and likability, were found to be pivotal in the development of substance abuse--more than friends' deviance. Results suggest that prevention…

Attempts to identify how perceptions by black men of problem severity may be influenced by social, economic, and familial factors, working from the assumption that problem severity determines when stress becomes distress. Perceptions of 583 black adult fathers show that stress coping is not as problematic as expected. (SLD)

Examined the academic, psychological, and family patterns of 200 middle class dropouts and their reasons for dropping out. Proposes that school, psychological, and family factors are not separate but rather coexist and interact in the creation of this social problem. In addition, these factors interact with larger sociocommunal and sociopolitical…