In recent years, there has been increasing interest in finding ways of promoting and evaluating structural knowledge (knowledge of how ideas, events, and principles are interrelated). Research has demonstrated that students' numerical judgments of the strength of relatedness among ideas drawn from a domain provide insights into how they have…

A simulated search and screen committee activity for selecting three candidates for final interviews for the position of assistant professor of higher education in a College of Education is presented. The institution, "Metropolitan State University," and the position are briefly described, and the process of the appointment of the…

The qualitative research method of focus group interviewing was employed in a study of the subjective meaning of newswatching for the average American. Thirty-two adults were interviewed in four groups of seven to nine people each, and the audiotapes of the discussions were analyzed for comments on various aspects of television newscasters (the…

A program designed to help student teachers improve their skills through interaction with their peers is described. The Peer Group Support System (P.G.S.S.) is a self-evaluation process. Participants in the P.G.S.S. are elmentary student teachers, secondary student teachers, selected students enrolled in general methods courses and the faculty of…

Dynamics of discussion in the classroom are analyzed based on data from 64 classrooms in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Among the discourse problems considered are the separation of answers from questions, the relationship between the presupposition of an utterance and the speaker/hearer assumptions, and the relationship between utterance form and…

"Games" is a decision-making process for groups to use in analyzing the educational needs of a school. During three group sessions, a moderator leads the participants through a series of activities in which they identify: 1) concerns about the educational program, 2) needs for program improvement, 3) resources that are being used in relation to…

THIS PAPER EXAMINES SOME OF THE MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN RESEARCH ON STUDENT-LED SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION TEACHING PROCEDURES. IT FOCUSES UPON PROBLEMS OF CRITERION EXAMINATION, USE OF RATING FORMS TO ASSESS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VARIOUS METHODS OF INSTRUCTION, AND METHODS FOR CHARACTERIZING CLASSROOM PROCEDURE. THIS PAPER…

A MODEL FOR A CAREER GUIDANCE SYSTEM THAT APPEARS TO EFFECT POSITIVE CHANGE FOR STUDENTS, SCHOOLS, AND THE COMMUNITY IS PRESENTED. THERE ARE FOUR PHASES TO THE MODEL, ONE FOR EACH YEAR THE STUDENT IS IN HIGH SCHOOL. THE STUDENT'S SKILLS, APTITUDES, INTERESTS, INTELLIGENCE, AND ACHIEVEMENTS ARE DETERMINED AT INITIAL FACT GATHERING SESSIONS. THIS…

The five plays most frequently produced in high schools--"Our Town,""Harvey,""Arsenic and Old Lace,""You Can't Take It with You," and "The Curious Savage"--perpetuate an image of women that is no longer tolerated in most educational materials. An analysis of these plays shows that they include many more male than female roles and that female…

Three "deep structures" of the literary curriculum (contexts within which teachers teach literature) have been identified: (1) the imitative structure, in which students learn about the background of the text, (2) the analytic structure, and (3) the generative approach, dealing with a work's effect on readers. While experienced literary critics…

Group interaction research typically focusses on behavior under "laboratory" conditions rather than in less contrived situations. Observation of natural group behaviors at different ages can effect a better understanding of their occurrence and patterning at various developmental stages. Knowledge of age-related group behavior tendencies could…

THE PURPOSES OF THE STUDY WERE TO COMPARE (1) CONVENTIONAL LECTURE, PROGRAM-DISCUSSION, AND PROGRAM-PROBLEM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION, (2) STUDENT PERFORMANCE WITH AND WITHOUT CONFIDENCE IN PROGRAMED INSTRUCTION, AND (3) ACHIEVEMENT ON THE BASIS OF TEST SCORES ON THE FIRST ONE-THIRD OF THE CONVENTIONAL COURSE. TWO EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED IN…

A COMPOSITION PROGRAM DESIGNED TO GIVE UPWARD BOUND STUDENTS A FEELING OF SUCCESS WAS BASED ON FILMS WHICH THE STUDENTS VIEWED, DISCUSSED, AND WROTE ABOUT. THE FILMS FELL ROUGHLY INTO THE CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS, POLITICS AND PROPAGANDA, AND ART AND MUSIC. FOLLOWING CLASS DISCUSSIONS, STUDENTS WERE REQUIRED MERELY TO "WRITE ABOUT THE…

This experiment tested the hypothesis that stimulation in a given mode of discourse (e.g., the argumentative, or "A", mode of theme writing) will improve the quality of compositions written in that mode, but decrease the quality in another mode (e.g., the descriptive, or "D", mode). Ninety first-graders were required to write two themes in the "D"…

In a discussion of several liberal education programs for executives, those run for American Telephone and Telegraph at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Dartmouth College, Williams College, Northwestern University, and programs at Clark University, Southwestern University, Wabash College, Pomona College, Aspen Institute, the…