This document lists chapters or sections from books and handbooks to assist inservice teachers in developing their verbal interactive skills in the classroom. Minicourse lessons and plans are referred to frequently. After an initial diagnosis of the teacher's performance level, a training counselor meets with the teacher and utilizes such a list…

The use of reciprocal behavior contracts with families of behavior-problem adolescents was investigated. Most family contracting to date has involved one-way contracts; that is, the child agrees to certain responsibilities for which he will be reinforced by the parents. A reciprocal contract requires the parents, in addition to the child, to agree…

A conceptual approach toward more effective small group functioning is undertaken in this paper to provide a basis from which empirically relevant hypotheses can be drawn and tested. This analysis views actualizing individuals as possessing the unique ability to perceive and utilize the types of behaviors which are conducive to personalizing group…

In an effort to determine the effectiveness of group counseling with student nurses, 76 students enrolled in their first professional nursing course were randomly placed either in a counseling group or in a control group. As hypothesized, those students participating in the group counseling sessions received significantly higher grades in the…

This paper reports the development of a classroom observation instrument designed to broaden and extend the power of existing tools to provide a balanced, reciprocal perspective of both verbal and nonverbal communication. An introductory section discusses developments in communication analysis. The Miniaturized Total Interaction Analysis System…

Previous research on the use of interaction process analysis and microteaching in teacher education indicates that these two methods of achieving specified behavioral changes in the teaching behavior of student teachers are at least as effective, if not more so, than traditional methods. Attention now turns to the different ways that interaction…

This paper reports a study of selected examples of verbal behavior patterns in primary grade classrooms during science activities. The subjects were 32 elementary teachers within five mid-Michigan public school districts. A control group of 16 teachers taught science in the conventional manner. The experimental group received an in-depth study of…

A category system was developed to describe verbal and non-verbal classroom behavior of junior high school science students. The category system contained two major sections: communicative (symbolic) behavior and non-communicative (non-symbolic) behavior. The instrument was used in conjunction with a teacher behavior category system (developed in…

A category system was developed for describing the classroom behavior of earth science teachers. Video tape recordings were made of a random sample of 16 junior high school science teachers in Franklin County, Ohio. Classification of behaviors resulted in four major dimensions: Content Development, Management, Facilitating, and Classroom Climate.…

This paper reports the initial phase of a series of experiments conducted on a large number of videotapes made for the purpose of analyzing public-school classroom interaction. The experiments originally aimed to preduct the most reliable, efficient and economic way of producing transcriptions which are sufficiently representative of the verbal…

The procedures by which children from lower and middle class backgrounds attempt to obtain rewarding outcomes from each other were observed under semicontrolled conditions. Ten male and 9 female dyads, each composed of 1 middle class and 1 lower class preschool child, were required to complete 12 simple block puzzles in which each was given some…

The effects of the type of earth science course (Earth Science Curriculum Project (ESCP) and non-ESCP), the directness or indirectness of teacher-pupil interaction in various teaching activities (I/D ratio), and the teacher's philosophical orientation (T/NT ratio) on various student outcomes such as understanding of science and scientists;…

The Reciprocal Category System (RCS) is an observational system used to record and assess teacher-student classroom verbal interaction. The RCS is composed of nine verbal categories which are applicable to either the student or teacher (and as such are numbered differently, thus producing 18 categories) and one additional category--silence or…

The group discussion literature was examined to determine how fully its principles had incorporated social power principles, and to incorporate relevant power principles into the principles of group discussion. Discussion principles were classified by properties of group members, properties of groups, conditions imposed on groups, interaction…

The paper presents a nontechnical analysis of the philosophical theory of speech acts as a paradigmatic explanation of interpersonal communication. A contrast is drawn between the idea that meaning is "in people" and the speech act theory that meaning is an interpersonal construct. There are nine conditions of interpersonal communication that must…