Today's school children often come from homes that are dramatically different from those of 25 years ago. To help this new generation of students, many schools have developed advisor/advisee programs; tips on how a school can start such a program are covered in this booklet. Its main purpose is to outline the basic features of a successful program…

Recently, within the field of early childhood education, there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of social construction of knowledge and on the inter-relatedness of aspects of social and cognitive development. This study investigated a proposed relationship between young children's popularity status among peers and a representational…

An important and well-documented finding in the peer relations literature is that there is an association between children's peer relations and their later social development. Two models have been proposed for the predictive link between early peer relations and later adjustment: incidental and causal. Although findings have supported an…

This book provides easy-to-follow procedures for producing a play in an elementary school classroom. The book discusses choosing a play, casting, coaching, costumes, sets, and props. The process described in the book begins with simple creative dramatics that can be done easily in class, and then moves on to small group activities that continue to…

Play should be taken seriously because of its relevance for future workers. Current research indicates that the most successful workers are creative and socially capable rather than merely highly skilled or intelligent. Play enables children to develop lifelong interpersonal skills that will enhance success in the future workplace. Play scenarios…

This study examined individual parent personality dynamics and partner-as-parent ratings as each relate to child problem behaviors and competencies. Subjects were 30 Caucasian heterosexual couples with 6-year-old children. Data were collected with the Adult/Adolescent Type A Behavior Scale (AATABS), Parenting Alliance, Child Behavior Checklist…

This curriculum to foster the inclusion of students with disabilities is designed to be offered by educators in junior and senior high school settings. It is intended to bring together students with and without disabilities for classroom instruction, discussion, and experiential learning. The experiential component pairs students with disabilities…

This study examined age and gender differences in global, academic, athletic, and social self concepts in a group of 311 middle and high school students (ages 12-18) attending science, mathematics, or computer science classes at a summer program for the academically talented. The self-concept scores were obtained from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem…

Critical factors that influence the environment for learning include the teacher's interpersonal skills--including how expectations, rules, and consequences are communicated--and the student's sense of belonging in the classroom. This pamphlet provides a process for developing a personalized classroom program that will address classroom management…

This study examined children's awareness of peers' perception of them in three areas of social behavior: Sociability-Leadership, Aggressive-Disruptive, and Sensitive-Isolated. Subjects were 175 first- through fifth-grade students who evaluated same-sex classmates using the standard version of the Revised Class Play (RCP) behavior nomination…

A field study of 29 mountain-course instructors at the Colorado Outward Bound School (COBS) explored the relationships of gender-related personality traits and soft skills to outdoor leadership styles and course outcomes. Soft skills are competencies necessary for effective interpersonal helping skills, as opposed to hard skills, which are…

Sex education for individuals with autism needs to be a part of planned instructional programs covering a variety of settings and foci, from health and hygiene to social skills and dating. The manner and amount of detail during the instruction will depend on the functioning level of the person being taught and what teaching strategies are most…

This manual describes the "Friends" project, a year-long effort in Minnesota to develop methods for the staff of residential service agencies to support people with developmental disabilities in establishing friendships with nondisabled people in their communities. Six agencies around the state selected a total of 23 individuals (ages 11…

To deal with behavior problems and create safe environments, schools increasingly have adopted social control practices. These include discipline and classroom management practices that analysts see as blaming the victim and modeling behavior that fosters, rather than counters, the development of negative values. To move beyond overreliance on…

This qualitative study asked three elementary principals what they did to learn about their school's culture, what informative sources were available, and what hindered their progress. The two principals having a successful year were aware of and responded to school culture; employed various strategies for gathering information from numerous…