Our teaching and learning habits are useful but they can also be deadly. They are useful when the conditions in which they work are predictable and stable. But what happens if and when the bottom falls out of the stable social world in and for which we learn? Is it possible that learning itself--learning as we have come to enact it habitually--may…

The position of this paper is to further the discussion on what constitutes academic assessment in the PhD by artefact and exegesis. In doing so, it explores some of the ideas that arose in setting up the PhD in creative writing at Swinburne University of Technology. Thus, I: (1) survey some of the questions that arise about the journeys made by…

Presents design, collected data, and findings of study that deals with students' exposure and improving information-gathering procedures on students' knowledge bases in political science. (Author/ND)

A study was designed to determine whether scores for general knowledge, specific knowledge, and general interest on a topic could be used as predictors of children's listening comprehension. Baseball and dolls were chosen as the topics because their stereotypic nature would allow the data to be generalized across the subject population. Data were…

The document contains materials needed to implement Project CHANGE (Concepts of Handicaps and Attitudes Need Guidance and Education), a curriculum designed to improve the attitudes of children in Grades K through 8 toward the disabled. Included are the program manual, assessment instruments, the resource file, and a scope and sequence chart. The…

Educators and researchers have long equated the term "educated" with number of grades of formal schooling completed, relegating to the ranks of the "undereducated" those persons without higher education, and especially those without at least 12 years of schooling. Recent research by Alan Tough, however, and case studies in…

Patterns of cautiousness in a prose learning task were examined in three age groups of adults representing three levels of educational experience. Types of instruction, order of material presentation, sex, and educational experience level were varied for all groups of the 90 adults participating in the study. The main findings were as follows: (1)…

A study of the role of the attention construct in the process of transforming specific newspaper and television media content into political knowledge involved a survey of 71 undergraduate students in an introductory journalism course. A review of the literature had revealed that the use of the attention construct had been infrequent in mass media…

This paper presents the background and development of the Crisis Intervention Simulation Survey, (CISS), a written simulation instrument designed to assess police officers' knowledge of effective crisis intervention skills and the awareness of their emotional responses to selected crisis intervention situations. It summarizes the recent history of…

The effects of using newspapers as adjunct materials in education have been documented in recent research. Research results indicate that students are seriously deficient in civic knowledge, and that the newspaper can serve as a bridge between home, school, and community by educating youth about the real world and by influencing their knowledge of…

Teacher ineffectiveness in elementary education is to a large degree due to inadequate preservice education in content areas, and this should be a concern of teacher educators. Statistical data supports this contention, e.g., 275 of 389 students in a mathematics methods course could not work a simple percent problem. Although some professors would…

Questionnaires concerning the users of educational tests were returned by 87 school superintendents in the United States and 228 members of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). Most NCME respondents were associated with colleges. The NCME sample represented measurement experts, while the superintendents represented…

An analysis and model of the cognitive processes underlying complex learning situations are presented. A theory is proposed that attempts to specify particular internal knowledge structures generated and modified during instruction, and to use them to explain specific difficulties that the learner experiences and also the overall progress being…

Writers and writing teachers should be wary of depending on readability indexes as indicators of the difficulty of written messages. The Gunning Fog Index and the Damerst Clear Index, two readability formulas, were used to determine the readability of "A Statement of Editorial Policy" and two abstracts appearing in an issue of…

A study of 102 children who failed a preschool hearing screening was undertaken to describe the effectiveness of the followup procedures used in public health screening programs. Parents of the study children were interviewed to ascertain the parents' ability to understand the purpose of the testing and the technician's comments following the…