A sixth-grade student teacher developed and implemented a unit on creative writing, and one lesson in the unit on writing legends was particularly successful. A discussion of Davy Crockett and the legends surrounding his life, began the lesson. The student teacher then introduced trade books from the library station for the pupils to read.…

Higher education administrators often wonder if the information they receive from the low response rates to surveys of non-matriculating applicants accurately reflects the entire population of these non-matriculants. These questions are exacerbated by evidence that response bias does exist. This paper describes how St. Mary's College in Notre…

This study examined instructional practices previously found to have improved student academic performance, the extent to which undergraduate students preferred these practices, how often they occurred in the classroom, and the relationship of these practices to grade point averages, motivation, educational preparation, and retention. A survey was…

A study examined whether the core objectives were being met in an ethics course called "Values and Choice" at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A student survey was developed by faculty representatives from each of the disciplines offering a core course meeting the "Values and Choice" requirement. Subjects were 212 students…

The University of Central Florida (UCF) has formally recognized distributed learning as a strategic direction to increase access to educational opportunities for students within its service area and beyond. The University has chosen to employ asynchronous learning networks (ALN) as a primary approach to address the challenges of a rapidly-growing…

Collaborative learning is receiving increased attention within educational environments. With increasing use of technology to support collaborative techniques it is critical that existing research in this area is expanded. This study was initiated to examine and explore the perceptions of students relative to experiences within two types of…

This paper discusses the content analysis of literacy narratives written in a college composition course in the Fall, 1996. The students developed their histories during the first weeks of class, using a journal format and sharing results with the class. They then wrote a polished and completed reading and writing autobiography. Using purposive…

This book contains a collection of essays about literacy, theory, and the Internet. It addresses problems concerning understanding the new electronic technologies, getting the computer in the classroom, and teaching students to write with it. The book's first section, "Literacy in the Information Age," offers four essays: "Literacy after the…

The job of teachers of composition is to teach students how to write, and what they teach them to write is the school essay. Yet, if they stop to see the school essay for what it really is, they will discover that for all their humanistic claims of wanting to give students voices, the genre is one that actually works to exclude many of these…

This paper addresses the problem of faculty members being confronted, in or out of the classroom, with students' personal reactions to some of the subject matter, especially sex and gender material, found in today's college sociology courses. The paper suggests some ways in which sociologists view student sharing of personal reactions and…

A three-part exploratory study was conducted to examine children's responses to interactive, nonlinear HyperCard stories and the children's design of stories in HyperCard. Twenty-three fifth graders took part in a semester-long language arts training program that included HyperCard as well as traditional stories in books. Two questions were posed:…

In a high school writing workshop, students frequently would go through multiple essay drafts and conferences with the teacher and fellow students before realizing that their theses were incorrect. A teacher devised the "lexivision" to address this problem. Students used Venn diagrams, graphs, or flow charts to represent concepts in the…

Implicit communication theory (which posits that certain communication behaviors evoke emotional responses in receivers) is a plausible explanation for the teacher behavior-student learning link. An integrated approach to testing the theory is available in the form of the Continuous Attitudinal Response Technology (CART), which enables subjects to…

A study explored perceived reality and developmental differences in viewing theater. Subjects, 33 second graders, 33 fourth graders, 23 sixth graders, and 23 college students viewed a production of "This Is Not a Pipe Dream," a non-representational play based on biographical facts about the early life and work of the surrealist painter…

An instructor's effort to internationalize a business communication course taught him much about the relationships between cognitive egocentrism and cognitive ethnocentrism. Cognitive egocentrism is the chief obstacle to be overcome in learning to write, even within a culture, while cognitive ethnocentrism is the chief obstacle to be overcome in…