Social and political changes that have been brought on by technological advances have also had a great effect on education. Education today must have the capacity to create a new renaissance man, who is knowledgeable in many aspects of his social and natural environment and who has the additional capacity to adapt and revise his knowledge. (LBH)

A study examined the influence of student characteristics on ratings of political science instructors over a four-year period. Student characteristics examined were: reason for taking the course, attitude toward the subject matter, class, grade point average, grade currently being earned in the course, and major. (Author/RM)

Expected student teaching performance and supervisory bias can be defined through performance contracting, an agreement between those involved in the supervisory relationship which clarifies problem areas related to content, teaching style, pupil evaluation, classroom management, and the evaluation of the student teacher. (Author)

Results of research on children with learning disabilities indicate that the communication between parents and teachers of the child has less to do with the student's academic achievement than had been previously thought; however, a parent's active involvement with the school program itself may improve student performance. (JD)

Instructional improvement programs are most likely to be effective if, in addition to providing feedback to instructors, there is a system of institutional support, reward, and training. The instructor must be educated in how to conceptualize, interpret, and apply feedback information. (Author/MLW)

Six severely disabled young adults were taught to self-monitor work rate on job tasks, evaluate daily performance against a criterion, and recruit contingent feedback from supervisors. Performance results indicated a functional relationship between self-recruited feedback and maintenance of improved work rate. (Author/JW)

The article describes a secondary-level curriculum for written expression based on a linguistic model. Directed toward learning disabled adolescents, the method teaches sentence and paragraph construction based on verbal and written models presented by the teacher. Writing good sentences, paragraphs, and essays is presented as a logical extension…

In a study designed to improve vocational productivity in five moderately/severely retarded adults, reinforcement and self-monitoring were compared to self-monitoring with movement training (prompting the most efficient task performance movement). Four subjects responded minimally to trainer-initiated reinforcement or self-monitoring but showed…

Offers a model for a performance-based training system based on job task analysis methodology that has been successfully implemented at a nuclear utility. Presents a flow chart of the training needs system and explains the steps involved in the process. (ML)

Reports on an analysis of student evaluations of an introductory college-level physical geology course over a five year period. Indicates that instructional and pedagogical traits were assessed as being of importance in contributing to the satisfaction of the students with the course. (TW)

The recognition performance for segmental stimuli was compared when presented through a single-channel tactile device and through a 24-channel vocoder. Both consonant and vowel stimuli were tested under visual only, tactile only, and visual/tactile conditions. Results indicated no significant performance differences for the 12 artificially…

An observational system is described that collects precise data on the performance of teachers involved in task analytic instruction with severely handicapped students. Discussed are the observation process, provision of feedback to the teacher, teacher self-monitoring of instruction, and field test data for the observation system. (JDD)

A broad international perspective is taken in this examination of the objectives of national repository planning; general principles on which a plan should be based; selection for national retention; criteria by which alternative national systems should be judged; and the main alternative models assessed against these criteria. (5 references) (CLB)

Investigated the effectiveness of a specific approach to school-based consultation training that emphasized didactic methods, simulation exercises, and videotape analyses. Examined the effect of instructor feedback on trainees' acquisition of consultation skills. Found the training led to increased acquisition of consultation skills, but addition…

Describes the development of a computer-assisted college course in group performance skills (GPS) which was designed to expand the instructor's ability to monitor development of individual performance skills and assess their influence on the group output. Computer-mediated communication is explained, and its implications for distance education are…