Explores relationships between adjudicated teaching-effectiveness scores, an observation-based assessment instrument, and social-skills scores of preservice teachers. Finds that an individual's nonverbal communication skills, skills in receiving and interpreting nonverbal communication, and ability to engage in social discourse were related to…

Describes three practical strategies for implementing peer consultation to improve college instruction using procedures implemented at the Air Force Academy (Colorado). The strategies are (1) small-group instructional diagnosis; (2) interactive student focus groups; and (3) classroom observations. (DB)

Describes a study that examined high school students' ethical reasoning in the context of their participation in a computer simulation of a workplace environment. Includes opportunities for ethical decision-making, classroom observation of participating students, and responses to hypothetical ethical dilemmas. (Author/LRW)

Examines childrens gender behaviors through the use of videotaped observation of four children aged 3 to 5 years old at a university laboratory preschool. Reveals that gender behaviors in early childhood are integrated with student and peer behaviors and constructed by individuals interacting with the social world. Addresses the implications from…

Describes the Praxis III assessment, an observation-based system for assessing the skills of beginning teachers that emphasizes teacher decision-making and the importance of student, school, and curricular context. The principles and processes of the assessment's design and construction are described, and issues in teacher performance-assessment…

Discusses the experiential activities that are used in a graduate course on qualitative research that addresses focus groups, observation, data collection, cultural sensitivity, ethnomethodology, data analysis, and morals and ethics in research. Explains that students participate in an activity in which they defend qualitative research. (CMK)

Male subjects (n=130) evaluated performance of targets who, prior to and during the performance, offered no excuse, claimed intended low effort, claimed anxiety, or claimed drug impairment. Subjects evaluated objectively equivalent performances more negatively if they came from an excuse-making target than a no-excuse target. (JBJ)

This qualitative study compared the instructional environments of a resource room and two regular classrooms for four intermediate grade students identified as severely learning disabled. Results suggested that regular classroom teachers need to provide students with LD with more explicit conceptual explanations of cognitive requirements of tasks…

Examined (n=36) teachers' perceptions and use of interactive videodiscs (IVD) in the teaching of science. Perceptions tended to be positive. Major barriers to IVD usage were limited equipment availability and lack of time to develop and implement IVD-based lessons. (Author/MKR)

This article describes the development and possible applications of the Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competencies (TASCC) for use with students in the first through fifth grades. The TASCC allowed 20 teachers to successfully observe and measure their students' verbal and nonverbal communicative abilities and use of compensatory…

Five criteria are proposed for evaluating performance in research studies: the directness of sampling, the responsiveness of the target, the reliability of the observers, the frequent assessment of the target during the intervention period, and the critical nature of the target. A case study illustrates effectiveness of the criteria. (Author/CR)

Examined relations among measures of child language derived from observations of 20-month-olds' speech with mothers, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports. Found that structural equation modeling supported strong relations among the three sources, the loading of multiple measures on a single latent construct of vocabulary competence, and…

Examined psychometric properties of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales with preschoolers. Found that cross- informant correlations were poor for social skills, low for internalizing behaviors, and modest for externalizing behaviors. Parents and teachers rated boys as having more externalizing behaviors than girls. Parents identified…

Drawing in a nature journal connects students to their immediate environment, integrates many disciplines, and encourages various styles of learning. It is not necessary to draw well; nature journaling is about learning observation skills, not drawing skills. Equipment, getting started, and various exercises are described. Fifteen resources are…

Examined cultural patterning in situational variability in mother-infant interactions among middle-class Anglo and Puerto Rican mothers and 12- to 15-month-old firstborns. Found that the emphasized socialization goals and childrearing strategies were consonant with individualistic orientations for Anglo mothers and sociocentric orientations for…