Social cognition is defined as a new field in psychology which emphasizes cognitive processes. It is concerned with how people interpret and construct their social environment. Selected aspects of this field are reviewed. These include perceptual salience, causal attributions, and indirect ability communications. Their pertinence to the…

The relationship between cognitive style (field independence/field dependence), proctor/student interactions, and achievement of undergraduate students in a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) course was studied. Field dependence/independence was measured using the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT), which measures ability to identify a…

This manual provides guidelines and activities for organizing and managing junior high school classes. The first five chapters are devoted to the topic of getting ready for the beginning of the school year; the last four chapters suggest guidelines and activities that are helpful in maintaining a management system. Chapter 1 deals with organizing…

A survey was conducted to determine the feasibility and availability of inservice communication skills workshops for Illinois elementary and secondary school teachers. Twenty-four college communication department administrators responded to questions regarding the availability of such workshops, and 174 public school district superintendents…

Based on the premise that writing research will be useful to educators only to the extent that it offers them conceptual tools to use in framing and solving their own problems, this paper reviews studies that address educators' perennial concerns about writing instruction. Among the questions addressed in the paper are those concerning (1) the…

Research on the effects of questioning in the classroom has explored the placement, timing, type, and social impact of questions. Principles of good questioning include the following: (1) well-stated questions should be concise, clear, and complete; (2) questions should be topical in nature, requiring a complex answer; (3) yes or no questions…

A study was conducted to determine (1) whether teachers see a need for or value interaction in the classroom, (2) what methods they use to encourage interaction, (3) how much interaction actually occurs in high school English classrooms, and (4) what factors or methods encourage or discourage interaction. The study involved five high school…

A study of code-switching in the classroom language use of a group of Ohio third graders used as data over 17 hours of conversation taped in September through December during structured small-group lessons, informal conversations, whole-class lessons, and peer teaching of English to monolingual and Spanish-dominant children. The group included…

This study was designed to find how teachers differed in their tacit assumptions about classroom communication. (Author)

Research has shown that nonverbal variables have a strong influence on classroom communication. This paper examines the way in which communication in the classroom is affected by the variables of distance, physical environment, facial expression, vocal cues, posture and gestures, touch, use of time, physical attractiveness, and dress. Each…

This is an examination of beginning teachers' acquisition of the structures of classroom discourse. Teachers were compared at the beginning and at the end of their first teaching year using a discourse analysis system. Thirty-three hours of audiotapes from 11 teachers were transcribed an coded. Teacher initiations during informing, eliciting, and…

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a rationale for the design and use of a nonverbal coder-training system, and second, to present comprehensive coder-training packages theoretically based in the areas of (1) learning theory, (2) nonverbal research, and (3) instructional technology. Specifically, this training program is…

Argues that the area in which the artistic development of young children can be helped immediately, without awaiting teacher retraining in the various arts, is story telling: if children are continually asked to tell stories, and if delight is shown in their stories, then the stories improve; eventually children want to write them down. (Author/JM)