The power relations between ethnographers, teachers and students present more than a few difficulties. When one graduate student sat in on--in fact, became a student in--another graduate student's elementary composition class, "The American Experience through Literature," several problems arose concerning the status of the…

This paper provides an overview of inspections in England's schools. The paper describes four approaches to inspection: inspection in the pre-1993 days; the current inspection system in elementary-secondary education; inspections initiated by the schools themselves; and inspection in further-education colleges, which are similar to community…

This handbook is devoted to the process of teacher research. It shows teacher-researchers how they can pursue their research activities systematically and carefully and provides a number of research techniques, methods for categorizing data, and suggestions for publishing research. The chapters are: (1) "Try To Love the Questions Themselves:…

This literature review on the importance of play in the development of children focuses on play differences of exceptional children, methods of observing and assessing play, play interventions, the use of toys and playthings, the role of nonhandicapped peers in play, the physical environment for play, and the role of adults. The paper concludes…

The difficulties and obstacles encountered in research in the analysis and interpretation of writing conference talk are theoretically important. These dilemmas may serve as markers to help researchers see how the routines of research and the interpretations of findings are integrally related. The ways in which talk "rearranges" problems…

The collection of observational data in natural settings and in real time requires equipment that is light and easily used, and programs that permit rapid and flexible encoding of data. This paper describes a set of four programs for collecting and analyzing continuous time sample, focal-individual data as described by J. Altmann (1974), using a…

Part of a series for 4-H members between 9 and 19 years of age, this age-graded guide to the development of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds aims to help 4-H members who are children and adolescents themselves: (1) understand the physical, mental, social, and emotional development of children in middle childhood; (2) learn to care for a child in middle…

The report documents activities of the 3-year (1986-1989) Assessment as Intervention Project at George Washington University (District of Columbia). Major activities of the project included: data collection with 25 families of newborn at-risk premature infants, including assessment-intervention sessions at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of age; data…

In this paper, academic efficiency is operationally defined and a methodology for measuring it at the school level is described. Academic efficiency is defined as the extent to which a school utilizes its time for the academic development of all its students. The measure of academic efficiency must include three elements: time, students, and…

A total of 28 middle class preschool children ranging in age from 3.5 to 5.5 years participated in a study designed to identify characteristic behaviors of children differing in their social acceptance by peers. Indexes of social acceptance and rejection were obtained through a peer nomination procedure based on queries about most and least…

This monograph reviews studies which have measured and compared classroom and other human behaviors occurring in different cultures and nations, points out problems related to the comparisons made, and describes procedures which can be used to help standardize measurements of behavior made using systematic observation instruments. Standardization…

An investigation was conducted to better understand the interaction between physical and social settings, culturally based customs for parenting, and the ideology of caretakers in two Israeli cultures undergoing modernization. Yemenite and Kurdish parenting systems were examined by observing mother/infant interactions in unstructured naturalistic…

A study investigated (1) how adult responses vary with children who display different rates of positive social behaviors, and (2) predictive sequential relationships between specific types of child and adult behavior within an interaction. Pretest data were used to select nine girls from 4 to 6 years of age who ranged from low to high in their…

The hypothesis that teachers are unaware of the pattern of their interactions with students was tested by observing dyadic interactions between teachers and students and having teachers estimate their interactions. Results indicated a general lack of awareness on the part of teachers of the frequency and types of their interactions. (Author)

Describes activities for the elementary school classroom to increase observational accuracy of children. (CP)