Conducted in 1991, this study surveyed the quality of day care centers in the province of Pavia, Italy, in order to provide a description of the centers and to trace educational patterns in the infant, young toddler, and toddler sections of the centers. The 32 day care centers located in the province employ a staff of 342 and provide 1,700 places…

A study in Sri Lanka concerning the effects of second language tests, specifically the O-Level examination in English as a Second Language, on classroom language instruction is reported. The study investigates the phenomenon of washback or backwash, the influence of testing on instruction. It is cited as the only known research investigating…

Designed to help teachers monitor their students' progress in beginning literacy, this book describes some classroom observation tasks which have been used systematically by New Zealand teachers to guide their teaching of young children in formal school programs. The book is designed for: teachers who work individually with children having…

Classroom observation and evaluation of teachers by supervisors or principals is a delicate process. Most teachers would welcome feedback from their supervisors about improving teaching, but they rarely receive it. Many times the role of the principal is unclear in the observation process. Standardized observation formats sometimes fail to…

This book focuses on what it feels like and what it means to spend substantial portions of one's everyday life in the chat rooms, support groups, and virtual communities of cyberspace. Interviewing heavy users online, and becoming one herself, the author creates and ethnographic site for inquiring into the meanings of life online, a place where…

This study was conducted to examine the preparation of principals to deal with incompetent or marginal teachers. There is some concern that principals may not be current on effective teaching techniques, may not have sufficient time during the day to deal with management demands as well as teacher observation and assistance, and may not have…

This report describes a program designed to promote the use of recorded observations in Child Development Associate (CDA) advisors' assessments of interns in early childhood education at a southwestern community college. Sixty-one advisors participated in the program, which consisted of a series of five staff development meetings, formulation of a…

This paper proposes a strategy for analyzing and improving a college professor's approach to teaching. The strategy uses volunteer observers and a simple checklist, the Teacher Observation Checklist, of positive teaching behaviors drawn from the literature. Since college professors' sensitivity to examination and evaluation is high, this strategy…

In an effort to help developmentally delayed or disabled children succeed in an integrated or regular early childhood classroom setting, the Rural Area Model Preschool Project staff developed an ecological inventory to identify the behaviors and skills expected of preschoolers in classroom settings. The inventory was used for 2 months in eight…

In this paper a new conception of school science is set forth, based on the utilization of data collected in introductory college chemistry classrooms in a western university. Two sections of freshmen chemistry and several of the accompanying laboratory periods for the first weeks of the fall semester were observed. The methods of research were…

This manual describes the results of a 3-year research project at George Washington University (District of Columbia) called the Assessment as Intervention Project, which explored approaches to parent-sensitive developmental follow-up for prematurely born infants who received neonatal intensive care and their families (N=25). After an…

This publication reviews issues and processes in the quest for less-biased, least-biased, non-biased assessment. It is intended to aid the school psychologist in assisting all individuals in placement or program decisions for school-age children. The first section articulates the common sources of bias in assessment and identifies concepts…

The overall purpose of this project was threefold: (1) to gather task descriptive data concerning engagement rates of students across grade levels, abilities, classrooms, contextual factors, subject areas and task structures; (2) to link various teacher behaviors with student engagement rates, focusing on correlational results between a number of…

Using data from previous comprehensive studies of incentive pay plans, this report draws conclusions about assessing and implementing various incentive pay plans. Following a brief history of incentive pay plans from 1908 to 1983, an analysis of accumulated research is provided that shows the reasons why incentive pay plans for teachers have…

Sixty students in 10 classrooms in 5 high schools were extensively observed over a 10-week period during the fall semester of 1982. Based on pre- and posttests to measure achievement gain on algebraic objectives and change in attitude, the study investigated the relationships between student achievement and variables of student behavior,…