This paper summarizes the state of instructional software being produced by commercial sources in the United States as of late 1984, and reports some of the trends which led up to that state. After a brief background synopsis and description of the procedure used to obtain information, the document discusses such topics as: amount of software…

To help students in school develop a flexible understanding of subject matter, teachers need to foster understanding of the relationships within and across disciplines, what specialists in a field do, how knowledge in a discipline is generated, tested, and revised, and how knowledge in the discipline relates to the learners' environment.…

Geophysics is the application of physics, chemistry, and mathematics to the problems and processes of the earth, from its innermost core to its outermost environs in space. Fields within geophysics include the atmospheric sciences; geodesy; geomagnetism and paleomagnetism; hydrology; oceanography; planetology; seismology; solar-planetary…

In recent years, rural sociology has been the subject of sociological inquiries. Many of these have been highly critical, raising questions about the ontological nature of the discipline. This paper extends the tradition, providing a brief historical analysis of rural sociology's roots as both theoretical and applied and critiquing current rural…

University adult education departments should forego functions not directly related to adult education, thus concentrating their energies and resources; two of their main concerns should be the training of adult educators and the initiation of research into curriculum development, community development, and the effectiveness of teaching practice.…

The issue of professional identity is of special concern to academicians in the humanities, especially those involved in the study of modern languages and literature. There is the problem of self-definition. Even reviewing the past of modern language and literature study affords no simple definition, as English as an academic subject has no clear…

In 1975-76, 26 institutionally administered tests gave students at the University of Texas at Austin the chance to earn credits for 52 lower division courses in 15 departments: anthropology, biology, chemistry, communication, English, French, German, government, history, Latin, mathematics, physics, psychology, Russian, and Spanish. Results were…

The teacher in the school of tomorrow will have a variety of roles. One of the more important will be that of diagnostician. Perceptive assistance for the teacher as diagnostician is available from the school psychologist, the social caseworker, the guidance worker, and the reading clinician. The services of all district personnel should be…

The 1974 study of program availability in Missouri provides data on the number of students registered in courses taught in the fall of 1974 and indicates the optimum number of students who could have been accommodated in each of the courses at that time. The information includes the level of the course and HEGIS discipline of the aggregate…

Information from the social sciences, related to the development of substantive content for social science curricula at the secondary school level, is recorded in 16 interviews with small groups of social scientists. A cross-representational team of psychologists and educators conducted these two-and-one-half-hour interviews to obtain the social…

The first of four chapters in this booklet on proposed minimum standards is a general discussion of accreditation procedures; it is designed to assist departments of education in reviewing, developing, and applying standards for legal accreditation or approval of programs for educating teachers. Chapter 2 contains principles and standards for the…

As the eighth and last in a series of short reports on 1972 legislation and achievements in specific subject areas in education, this research brief is devoted to curriculum and instruction. To obtain data, questionnaires asking for information on legislation and achievements in education were sent to all state departments of education,…

Whether or not environmental concerns provide a visable and continuing basis of university organization is the situation scrutinized in this speech. Apparently part of the problem has been the generation of some theme or model around which a core of interested faculty and students could work. It is implied that some conceptual organization of an…

This essay is written for the secondary school teacher who is organizing that first course hoping to suggest some of the answers to the question: where to begin. The author begins by very briefly describing the discipline in terms of its central concerns with some history and some prediction for tomorrow. Against this historical background,…

This conference report begins with a statement of purpose and an outline of organization for the conference. Three topics--human development, studies for all men, and teachers and teaching--were related to the liberal arts, the humanities, and the disciplines and were to be brought to focus by three synthesizing reports after the completion of the…