Traditionally, it has been off-limits to talk about failures attributable to the ideology of democratic, student-centered classrooms. However, these classrooms fail for a particular kind of student--the male student who defines himself with a quasi-religious, extremely religious or political stance and who demonstrates strident rejection of…

This pamphlet explores the results of a study concerning what expert lecturers are aware of during their lectures. Results of interviews with seven college lecturers, recipients of university teaching awards, are reported, as are summary evaluations of each professor's classroom where an audio tape was made of that day's lecture. Each evaluation…

Over a 12-year teaching career--7 years on the college level--an instructor has found that his healthy identity as a gay male informs his performance in the contact zone of the classroom in ways that may be different than that of heterosexual teachers. It appears that gay male composition teachers who are less closeted view their sexual…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether preservice teachers can be trained to be more clear during instruction and whether a causal relationship exists between teacher clarity and student achievement. A review of literature in teacher education, business, and industrial training revealed that no intact, empirically verified training…

This paper reviews research which has focused upon teacher nonverbal immediacy behaviors, and notes implications for additional research which considers culture as a key research variable. Specifically, the paper: (1) reviews and discusses previous research which has investigated nonverbal communication in classrooms, with an emphasis on teacher…

An interpretive account of two schools participating in the piloting of a new English program in Botswana junior secondary schools is presented in this paper. Methodology involved observation; analyses of school documents and student texts; and interviews with students, teachers, and administrators. Based on the perspective that teaching is an…

A study examined the competence of English teachers in an Anglophone country (Nigeria) and the types of classroom interaction in a Nigerian university. Subjects, 240 randomly selected first-year undergraduates who registered for a Use of English course, were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group was taught by two…

Two types of feedback are examined, and their use in controlling the processes of instructional development and improvement are discussed. Closed-loop feedback, the most direct, uses immediate feedback about a process or product to make immediate adjustments in it. Open-loop feedback, in which input cannot be changed immediately, uses feedback to…

A study described the social interactions of ability-grouped dyads as they construct knowledge of the scientific concept of balance to elucidate the relationship between interactions and conceptual growth. The verbal and nonverbal behaviors of 30 fifth-grade students were recorded as they completed three activities related to balance and levers.…

The role of personal narrative in multicultural education is examined. First, the relationship between student voice, storytelling, and the transmission of culture is discussed in the context of recent literature on those topics. The concept of voice describes the process of expressing oneself meaningfully through utterances and actions according…

A study examined curriculum decision-making in the classrooms of accomplished teachers of English in grades 9 through 12, focusing on aspects of structure, content, and ways of knowing and doing that combined to create a sense of a "curriculum" rather than a series of disconnected lessons. Four classrooms were studied each semester for…

Part of a larger line of inquiry on the socially constructed experience of the mediated classroom and student socialization in the university community, a study reports on the development of an instrument for tapping student experience in televised instruction classrooms. A theoretical framework underlies the instrument to illuminate reasons for…

Although mathematics can be described as a formalized language, the signs and symbols of mathematical representation are subject to individual interpretation, which, if inaccurate, can lead to inhibitions about and interferences with the mathematical learning process. The purpose of this study was to explore communication in an intermediate-level…

As part of a larger study of teacher-student conferences, a study examined naturally occurring one-to-one writing conference conversations between a ninth-grade English teacher (recommended as an excellent writing teacher) and three markedly different students. The study examined students' grapplings with the structure as well as the content of…

This list of 19 films and videotape recordings was developed in response to teacher requests for practical methods and materials for teaching about cultural similarities and differences. An introductory section briefly discusses classroom teaching about cross-cultural issues and the potential uses of the films included in the list. Indexes list…