One promising alternative to the traditional workshop format of inservice teacher education is to bring researchers and teachers more closely together, in classrooms, where the two groups can work as a team addressing those needs the teachers have defined. A teacher and a researcher collaborated in a 3-month effort to improve the way the teacher…

This paper describes the use of the Nominal Group Technique as a tool to assist community leaders in 23 Georgia counties, most of them rural, in identifying and prioritizing community issues. The counties and individuals involved were participants in the Georgia County Perspective, a 12-week leadership program designed to give local leaders skills…

The essence of a healthy democracy is open dialogue about issues of public concern. An integral part of the training of young citizens, therefore, includes the discussion of controversial social, political, and economic policies. The use of classroom discussions as a pedagogical technique to examine controversial issues is explored by considering:…

The processes entailed in facilitating or leading workshops or seminars for researching the curriculum in Technical and Further Education (TAFE) were examined by using a modified Delphi process, which was followed by a 2-day workshop. Participants in the study were all experienced curriculum development specialists with knowledge of one or more of…

In order to provide students training to teach handicapped learners with practice in acquiring and utilizing information about individual pupils in classroom situations, a guided design approach was implemented in a course on decision making that covered the major assessment techniques. A modified guided design book was written for the course…

Developed at Tarrant County Junior College (TCJC) Northeast Campus (Texas), this paper presents and discusses materials and activities for teaching foreign language conversation classes. Introductory comments describe TCJC's Department of Foreign Languages, new curricular emphases on the development of oral skills, the nature of the college's…

A sizeable and convincing body of research continues to indicate that children gain competence and confidence in using the English language when it is situated within a context that is at once purposive and pleasurable. Both empirical and anecdotal evidence suggest that exposure to a wide variety of good children's literature provides an effective…

One of the most difficult tasks business and professional communication teachers face is teaching students to appreciate cultural differences and their effects on business communication, both domestically and internationally. Students from a homogeneous background may dismiss or disparage cultural differences. Some classroom exercises can help…

A study was conducted to determine the patterns of questioning behaviors exhibited by four preservice and four inservice teachers in an inner-city elementary school. Specifically, the study examined the types of questions teachers asked, the types of responses given by students, the wait-time between questions that teachers provided for high- and…

The creative process of teaching is discussed. Teachers are artists because they employ creativity when they formulate, select, and organize their ideas into a medium which is called a lesson. This medium, in turn, is the means which provides a learning experience for others. There are eight articles. In the first article, "What is a Lesson?"…

Much of what can be described as online learning research and analysis advocates the use of software not only to collect the data, for example via an application such as a virtual learning environment, but also to analyze it, using a package such as NUDIST© or NVivo©. The intention of this article is to provide an alternative method of data…

This book describes an approach to teaching writing as an ongoing learning process shared by teacher and students. The method, which features multiple options for both teacher and students, is suited to a developmental, individualized approach. The emphasis is on inductive, dialectical methods in which teacher and students question, probe, debate,…

The study described in this volume investigated the talk of thirteen-year-old boys and girls, recorded while they were working in small groups on tasks set by their teachers. Specifically, research focused on the interplay between cognitive and communicative functions of speech in contexts planned for learning. "The Children and Their Talk"…

A study collected and analyzed information for use in improving the responsiveness of state agencies in carrying out their responsibilities in vocational education. Its basis was the position that the institutional leadership capacity of divisions of vocational education substantially affects the dynamics of vocational education. The first of two…

"Women Times Three--Women Working, Raising Children, Growing Older," a project conceived by the Saint Francis College Social Work Program, was implemented via 12 town meetings in 3 communities in Pennsylvania's Cambria County over a 3-month period in 1977. The project's purpose was to provide a low-key forum wherein both women and men of…