Tested a model of secondary and college students' affective learning (attitudes toward course, subject, teachers) as a function of behavior alternation techniques (BATs) and teacher nonverbal immediacy (concern for students). Found a positive relationship among teachers' use of BATs, immediacy, and students' affective learning. (PD)

The National Writing Project (NWP), begun in Berkeley, California, in 1974 as the Bay Area Writing Project, has expanded to more than 100 sites in 43 states. Current programs in New Hampshire and Virginia exemplify the potential offered by the NWP for improving student writing. (JBM)

Many social and intellectual forces focus introductory courses not on the process of inquiry but on its products. Changes that can help refocus these courses include limiting class size, emphasizing writing skills, having all levels of faculty teach the courses, and promoting exchange of ideas in the classroom. (MSE)

This description of a model program developed in Washington State for improving teachers' classroom effectiveness includes an outline of the program's 15-step process and its three key concepts--involvement, ownership, and commitment--followed by discussions of resource people and the program's two-day problem-solving retreat. (JBM)

Outlines three major bodies of theory that give rise to models of oral work, questions the implications each has for assessment, and considers the extent to which these theories have been born in mind by college examination boards. (HOD)

The city is described as a place where strangers meet, and that is also what happens in the public space of the composition classroom. If students share anything, it is an awareness of the need to negotiate the institutional demands of the freshman writing class and an invitation to enter the public forum where the issues can be divisive,…

There are many behaviors that young children must deal with, one of these being aggression. One strategy teachers can use to help children deal with aggressive behavior is reading children's stories with conflict themes. Stories encourage children's participation and discussion, enabling them to better communicate their often confusing emotions.…

This paper discusses the elaboration and application of "scientific culture" categories to the analysis of students' discourse while solving problems in inquiry contexts. Scientific culture means the particular domain culture of science, the culture of science practitioners. The categories proposed include both epistemic operations and…

This tipsheet provides information on the incidence of students with hearing impairments or deafness enrolled in postsecondary education institutions. It discusses the special needs of student with hearing impairments and warning signs of hearing loss. Tips are provided for instructors, including: (1) repeat or rephrase questions/comments from the…

This issue discusses homework issues related to students with disabilities and how to ensure that students with disabilities benefit from homework. It addresses communication problems teachers face in assigning homework to students with disabilities and recommendations for overcoming these communication barriers. Strategies are provided for…

In research on classroom discourses, case studies have been used to describe the dynamics of effective and ineffective instruction. In other research, quantitative studies have identified global features of such discourse. The research reported here combined the advantages of both methods, investigating how generally effective classroom discourse…

In 1998 the Charleville School of Distance Education (SDE) in Queensland, Australia, began using telephone teaching to replace high frequency radio as its means of communicating with rural and remote students. A study investigated the extent to which telephone teaching has contributed to the development of a constructivist teaching and learning…

The British National Curriculum suggests that a range of thinking skills need to be taught. But can children be taught to think? This paper takes the view that all thinking is embedded in a particular context. It gives an account of its author/educators' work with children, draws attention to distinctive features of their approach to teaching, and…

Successful course reforms rely on the development of courses that support productive patterns of classroom interaction. Particularly in the case of inquiry-based classes, the ways that students talk to each other and how they interpret the instructor's actions can make great differences in their learning. This paper describes results of research…