Evidence from followup studies of teacher education graduates indicates that teachers do not value certain major components of their teacher education programs and do not really remember or know what their teacher education programs attempted to teach them. While educational experts cite the extensiveness and comprehensiveness of teacher education…

Part of a volume which explores current issues in service delivery to infants and toddlers with handicapping conditions, this chapter discusses the nature of parent involvement in early childhood special education. Acceptance of the basic axiom of parent involvement needs to be accompanied by an understanding of individual differences in family…

Based on the idea that a healthier, saner and more creative classroom is possible, this book presents an extended case study of the behavior of two fourth grade girls, focusing on their writing. The book argues that the data gathered from observing students can lead to changes in the classroom and improved teaching practices by providing teachers…

This discussion of the relationship between self-directed learning, adult development, and distance education presents findings from researchers in the field of autonomous learning. In addition, the implications of self-directed learning for the curriculum and teaching methods in distance education are considered. The document is divided into the…

The use of motor ability tests to achieve sex-fair ability groups should be considered from three standpoints--task specificity, sex differences, and individual learning differences. Motor ability is frequently described as an individual's present ability to perform motor skills. Although several motor ability tests have been constructed for…

A training program was devised to develop automaticity of one subcomponent of reading--locating and disembedding multiletter units within words. The system involved the use of a training task that was implemented in a microcomputer-based game that required students to detect whether a target unit was presented within words that were shown in rapid…

Each year thousands of students entering college participate in credit by examination programs in an effort to qualify for exemption and in many cases college credit for general education core requirements. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between students who participate in a credit by examination program (in this case…

This module (part of a series of 24 modules) is on collaboration among school personnel in teaching handicapped students and using human resources in schools to develop responsive programs. The genesis of these materials is in the 10 "clusters of capabilities," outlined in the paper, "A Common Body of Practice for Teachers: The…

In a study to assess young children's social interaction with peers, six male toddlers who were the only participants in a playgroup were observed in two situations: (1) a GROUP situation in which at least four of the boys were present and (2) a DYAD situation in which only two boys were present. Both types of observations were made at 16, 19, and…

In three immediately succeeding trials, 45 young adults named 50 pictures of objects as rapidly as possible; word retrieval latencies were measured for each item. Before each trial, one experimental group was given information as to the word frequency (WF) level of the items' names. The other experimental group was given information as to the…

In this speech, the president of the National Education Association presents a series of arguments against the development of national educational standards and against the continued use of national, norm-referenced, standardized tests. Eight objections to the use of such tests are noted. Defense of the teaching profession's objections to the…

This paper summarizes the research on learning style based on responses to the Learning Style Inventory by 1,836 students in grades 1 through 12. Reliability analyses are included for each sub-scale for males and females based on factors determined by factor and content analysis. The intercorrelations are included for males and females within…

This study examines the relationship between IQ and yearly academic growth rate in reading and mathematics for low income children in the primary grades involved in the Direct Instruction Follow Through program (DIFT). Low income children, from 20 communities in the United States, who engaged in the DIFT program between 1969 and 1977 for either 3…

An examination of any school curriculum would reveal the existence of "basic" subjects such as reading, writing, and computation. Therefore a "return to basics" is not needed but rather a change in methodology in teaching these subjects. The following methodological changes are suggested: (1) Test each child to ascertain the level of achievement…

Focusing on the acquisition of semantic features and the relation between semantic and perceptual features, this study further tests the "semantic feature hypothesis," where a child acquires full adult word meaning component by component, and its complementary "correlation hypothesis," which claims that the source of these semantic features lies…