Observations were conducted to identify student behaviors that relate to students' functioning, defined first as social status within the group, and second as behavior problems perceived by the teacher. Fifty-four fifth grade boys and girls, from seven classrooms that were organized into two units, were observed over a 10-week period during both…

A study was made of the relationship between children's play behaviors and sociometric status, with particular attention to the influence of play materials on behavior. Subjects were 95 children, ranging in age from 44 to 60 months, attending 10 preschool classrooms. Sixty observations were made of each child's play behaviors. Sociometric measures…

This evaluation report focuses on a broad range of issues associated with the work of the Electronic Text Consortium (consisting of San Diego State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Nebraska, and WGBH Boston), whose year-long task was to develop and test a variety of electronic text services and to assess which configurations of…

In addition to assessing observed communication behaviors, this paper suggests that SYMLOG--a System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups--can be used by participant-observers as a foil for interpreting how their own value orientations affect their data collecting and theorizing. The first section of the paper examines the research role…

Developed to provide an alternative system for identifying emotional disturbance in students, the manual begins by briefly reviewing problems in current identification approaches. An emotionally disturbed person is defined in the paper as someone who exhibits either too much or too little of a socially significant behavior. An approach is then…

The extent to which advance organizer instruction about social behavior could affect preschool children's social problem-solving abilities was investigated. The study followed a pretest, training, posttest, and delayed posttest format and included periods of observation of children's spontaneous social behaviors before, immediately following, and…

Although self-reports from individual family members regarding their relationship patterns have been used to assess dysfunctional family processes, researchers often rely upon one family member as the source of such information. A study was undertaken to examine the relationship between mothers', fathers', adolescents', and observers' ratings of…

A teacher experimented with her fourth grade students in order to determine how much revision took place in their writing. Originally, the teacher had been dissatisfied with the way she taught writing. Children wrote stories; she graded them. Then she began seriously examining the revision process as she observed it in her classroom. Students were…

A recent Australian controversy over the representation of a same-sex family on national children's television highlighted the fact that early childhood remains a domain of strongly defended heteronormative family privilege. The authors use this controversial event as a springboard into an analysis of the interplay between the hegemonic discourses…

The questions raised in this article have to do with how to take due care of the subjectivity of the persons involved in a research project. My main point is that a researcher's self-reflection on ethical problems is inextricably a part of doing research in early childhood settings, if we want to create knowledge which is valid and takes care of…

Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This is not to deny, however, that the criticisms levelled at empathy-type tasks…

Reviewed are observational techniques for rating the communication of deaf-blind multihandicapped children, and reported is an initial study of the diagnostic observational competency of 75 speech pathologists at 5 levels of training and experience. (LC)

This study investigates the reactive effects of observers on interactions between teachers (undergraduates and mothers) and toddlers in a preventive educational program. Findings indicate that the presence of an observer differentially affects interactional patterns in the home. More specifically, undergraduates and toddlers are relatively…

This study examined the effect on junior high school students of film-mediated, intensive instruction in either observing details or in generating hypotheses on basic problem solving skills; the study stemmed from teachers' indications that lack of sophistication in these areas has led to more structured activities. One hundred and twenty randomly…