Issues facing educators today include drug traffic and abuse, crime and delinquency, gangs, weapons, violence, vandalism, schoolyard bullying, and crisis management. Teachers and administrators require special skills to cope with potentially explosive situations and violent students, yet training in those skills is not being received in university…

This report describes the development process of a distance education program in Sri Lanka run by the Institute of Distance Education for nongraduate teachers inservice, and presents results of the program's evaluation. Two teacher education courses--an elementary education course and a combined science/mathematics course--were offered. The…

A program using cultural anthropology and ethnographic techniques to prepare teachers for positions in the small elementary and secondary schools characteristic of the mountain west and high plains is presented. As part of this program, a freshman level education requirement introduces students to the special character and positive aspects of…

The purpose of the study was to determine if teaching a discrete course in a constructivist learning environment could reduce the level of anxiety towards Information Technology (IT) among pre-service teachers who perceived themselves as IT competent (Group 1) and IT incompetent (Group 2). The study also sought to investigate if the anxiety level…

Students in a teaching methods course evaluated a recently published basal reader to see if it conformed to guidelines for the efficacy of such materials already established by the class. A story selection was read to identify (1) essential background information, (2) text features that might cause comprehension problems (subject matter for…

Existing four-year teacher preparation programs for special education teachers can be improved in several ways through adjustments to the current curricular and experiential requirements. General and liberal education courses should be required and spread out over the entire undergraduate years (rather than concentrating such courses into the…

This paper examines the role of the initial exploratory experience, an introductory education course, in preparing teachers for working in mainstreamed classrooms. It is divided into five parts: (1) examination of the 11 knowledge competencies related to mainstreaming that can be developed as part of the initial exploratory course; (2) discussion…

A system was developed for analyzing the content of students' narrative reports of critical/significant events that occurred during experiences in two introductory teacher education courses at Ohio State University. This content analysis system is a hierarchical classification in which each event is classified in four ways: (l) type of experience…

Schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDE's) can respond to changes in enrollment patterns by reassessing their goals, and by focusing on the needs of educators to function in new and diverse situations. Many SCDE's provide courses or services that are helpful to nonschool educators, who have been described as educational services…

A 16-item Q-sort evaluation of teaching was administered to 2,784 graduate and undergraduate students in education at a state university. Four subscales based on Spady's (1974) teacher competencies model, subject expertise, pedagogical expertise, stimulation and empathy were obtained from two pilot studies. Test-retest reliability and construct…

Most students majoring in elementary education at Illinois State University are enrolled in the CORE Program. These prospective teachers are required to complete three on-campus unified "cores" or semesters of work which focus upon the arts, communication skills, and natural and social sciences. The fourth core or semester is devoted to clinical…

Since the central concerns of existentialism are the same as the central concerns of education in a democratic society, namely the fullest and freest development of the individual, existential thought was examined for the help it could give educators in more fully realizing this aim. Specifically, the central existential concept of authenticity…

Analyzing high school English methods courses in institutions approved for teacher education, this study examined (1) the variations in course content and organization, and (2) the possible relationships between course content and such factors as professional background of the instructor, size and type of institution, and duration and sequence of…

A questionnaire, including a list of 27 measurement topics, was sent to Utah teachers to study teachers' perception of the importance of various educational measurement topics. Results showed that teachers perceived most of the topics as important and that an undergraduate course could be developed to meet the needs of teacher students.…

Presents a state-of-the-art review of acoustics and its interaction with branches of the sciences and arts. Identifies the current divisions of acoustical study as classified by the American Institute of Physics. Provides descriptive summaries of ten different countries' instructional programs in this discipline. (ML)