Background information to help K-12 teachers use objects found in the Smithsonian Institution or in other museums to stimulate students' creative thinking is provided. To encourage creative thinking, teachers must provide students with divergent problems, i.e., problems that are expansive, allow for a variety of responses, and have no fixed…

The study reported in this monograph represents two years of data collection designed to explore the social meaning of language in naturalistic classroom settings. The first part of the book presents the framework within which the study was carried out. The first chapter explicates the framework provided by prior research on classroom language,…

Magic motivates students to talk, and stimulates the affective domain. While watching magic, many people imagine how the effect is accomplished or how they might perform the trick if they were performing. This can be extended into an English lesson by using phrases such as, "If I were a magician, I could..." Total physical response…

A study surveyed 972 college students for their preferences in classroom arrangement (tradition straight-row, horseshoe, and modular) and their seating preferences within each style. Results indicated that students' arrangement preferences are influenced by both attractiveness of the course and the individual student's communication apprehension…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of teacher expectancy on student performance. The question is asked: Do teachers in secondary grades treat students for whom they have low expectations in ways that tend to fulfill them, and if so, what is the nature of this differential treatment? Differential teacher behavior (quantitative and…

This pamphlet, provided in both English and Spanish, presents a brief overview of Situational Reinforcement (SR), a teaching methodology used in the materials published by the Institute of Modern Languages. Explanations are given concerning its theoretical basis, its practical applications, the history of its development, and the support it finds…

Meeting the needs of a wide range of student abilities in the classroom taxes the talents of educators. If mainstreaming is to be effective, interactions in the mainstreamed classroom should be supportive of students' learning abilities. Since they shoulder the major responsibility of effective mainstreaming, teachers need information and support…

To determine what counts as success in a French first grade, an ethnographer investigated what happens when the teacher "applies" her categories of "things students do" to particular situations. The category called "searching" served as an example. To produce a body of data, the teacher commented on videotapes of…

This report describes a classroom communication training program for foreign teaching assistants (FTAs) developed at the University of Minnesota in response to evidence that the FTAs were the subject of criticism and complaints because of poor communication abilities in their classes. The first two sections of the paper discuss the background to…

The process of invitational teaching involves the creation of an optimal situation where teachers with positive perceptions of students interact with students who feel good about themselves. The content of this invitational process is a type of self-belief extended from one person to the other, a belief that each individual has an unknown…

The results of a study in applied educational psycholinguistics are presented. The project used a theoretical model of communicative competence to develop testing techniques for diagnosing levels of ability in functional language skills, and to develop training techniques to promote the acquisition of speaking and listening skills among elementary…

The concept that teacher beliefs about future student achievement may actually influence the subsequent performance of students provides the basis for a model of teacher expectation communication which uses attribution theory as explanatory links in the communication process. These model links were tested in a two-year study involving 16 third-,…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between effective classroom management and the manner in which teachers assign and hold students responsible for written work in junior high schools. Seven more effective and seven less effective teachers were studied, and a summary of each teacher's accountability systems was written. Based on…

Two types of teacher behavior were elicited from student responses to the Pupil Control Behavior Form (PCB). Two custodial teacher types emerged from the data: the "screamer" type, described as a teacher who controlled pupil behavior with verbal methods that expressed anger or frustration; and the "cold fish" type, depicted as a teacher who…

A step-by-step description is given of the development of a model for the improvement of student teacher relationships. This model was created by a student forum in workshop sessions with teachers, other school personnel, and parents. In this report the design of the workshops is described, and the recommendations resulting are outlined. Included…