The main purpose of this paper is to delineate methods of data collection and coding currently being used in a longitudinal observational study of toddlers in 25 black families in Oakland, California. Data collection activities, accomplished through monthly three-hour visits to each home, focused on five types of data: (1) videotaped and…

The debate between proponents of ethnographic and quantitative methodology in classroom observation is reviewed, and the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches are discussed. These methodologies are directly compared in a study that conducted simultaneous ethnographic and quantitative observations on nine classrooms. It is…

The System for Integrated Language Communications Observation (SILCO) was developed to provide descriptive information about integrated language communication instruction. Such instruction is defined as that which interrelates listening, speaking, reading, and writing through developmental sequences of skills resources and activities and provides…

Methodological incarceration occurs when research and investigation are restricted by the traditional concepts of how a study should be designed and are hampered by those notions which dictate what research is. This paper examines several reasons why social science research in general--reading research in particular--is considered by some to be…

Communication behaviors which facilitate cooperative problem solving were investigated in 3- to 5-year-old children. Thirty-two dyads, matched on age, sex and friendship were videotaped as they used balance scales to locate pairs of blocks of varying weight and surface design, but identical in size. All subjects had conventional labels for the…

Developed specifically to aid teachers who are using or wish to use the Maryland Plan approach to Industrial Arts, this guide offers procedural information on testing and evaluation useful to any teacher interested in evaluating student performance. Focus is on how to develop test items based on instructional objectives; examples are included.…

Characterizations, given in the form of descriptive adjectives, of second- through fifth-grade elementary school children by their classroom teachers and by classroom observers were analyzed in this report and compared with each other. Females consistently received more favorable characterizations than males, especially as reflected in teacher…

An experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that a program of prompting, practice, and feedback would improve the beginning teacher's ability to observe pupil performance in the classroom. Eighty-four teacher education students were randomly assigned to four 35-minute treatments: (I) viewing an instructional video tape of 21 brief…

It has been demonstrated that interaction analysis is a useful tool for helping teachers not only to hold illustrations of their teaching for future analysis but also to focus on and analyze specific aspects of their verbal instructional behavior. Apparently, four conditions are necessary to enable teachers to analyze and evaluate their…

Although educational television is associated with the classroom, data comparing the production techniques of ETV to those employed in commercial television does not support the stereotyped image of ETV as a televised lecture. Late in 1961, five students knowledgeable in television production and specially trained as observers for this study…

Changes in manipulative play with objects were examined in a longitudinal sample of 10 boys and 9 girls tested at ages 9, 13, and 18 months. Stability of individual differences in play was also examined. Each child was observed individually for 7 minutes in a room in which a tea set was the only toy present. Seven types of play behavior were…

This study focused on a program which was designed and implemented to incorporate paraprofessional "dorm counselors," who provided direct supervision of the adolescents in the residential center, into the diagnostic process. A Behavioral Assessment Training Program was designed to focus on three specific components of behavioral…

In this study of 40 primaparous mothers (15 to 36 years of age) and their newborns the significance of predictors of maternal responsiveness was assessed immediately following birth in the delivery room and at feedings 2-3 days and 4 weeks following delivery. The variables used as predictors included the mothers' age and background, prenatal…

This book describes the Skylab 4 Earth Explorations Project. Photographs of the earth taken by the Skylab astronauts are reproduced here and accompanied by an analytical and explanatory text. Some of the geological and geographical topics covered are: (1) global tectonics - some geological analyses of observations and photographs from Skylab; (2)…

This paper discusses evaluating and observing teacher performance. It consists of three sections. The first section is an introduction, in which it is stated that most observations are used for the following two purposes: (1) the improvement of instruction, and (2) the provision of information to those who make personnel decisions in a school…