A study focused on investigating perceptions of sexist humor, specifically on how people perceive others' reactions to sexist humor. Subjects, 206 college men and women, rated communication competence and attraction of actors in vignettes depicting 2 different reactions to sexist humor. Results indicated that sex of both the joke teller and the…

International students from western European countries attending American universities often face severe culture shock in the areas of education and personal development. The four stages of culture shock are the honeymoon stage, crisis stage, recovery stage, and the adjustment stage. Culture shock can be overcome by finding out about the new…

A study examined what critiques, if any, encourage debaters to think about their debating in the most productive ways. It evaluated oral critiques and revealed decisions as components in influencing the debaters'"self-talk" or internal dialogues as the more important messages. The study used R. Petty and J. Cacioppo's (1986) elaboration…

In an introductory-level Romantic Poetry course, a loose-leaf notebook is kept on reserve in the library to serve as a classbook or collaborative journal in which all class members (including the teacher) write comments as the semester progresses. Entries are dated and addressed to individuals or to the class as a whole. Informal entries allow…

As Martha Nussbaum argues, narratives, and especially novels, provide a way of reflecting on what it means to live well morally, and the emotional responses that stories evoke are crucial to the ability to formulate complex moral judgments. An important aspect of the moral nature of literature is the reader's "empathetic imagination," or…

Students at Westchester Community College (WCC) are a diverse and often disenfranchised group. To help these students find their own voices, lyric poems are read now and then in a freshman writing course. Initially, lyric poems are read and discussed during the first week of class. Without the fear of reading something incomprehensible, students…

It is an open question whether popular culture courses are effective sites in which to instill the kinds of critical media literacies that might contribute to students acting in support of social justice in their everyday lives. A course called "The Uses of Popular Culture" focuses on contemporary multicultural American society to…

This study examined the nature of adolescents' responses to ads and stories containing different degrees of stereotypical portrayal of females. Subjects were 115 students in grades 8 and 11 enrolled in English classes in two middle-class suburban school districts. The materials used consisted of four ads and two stories portraying females,…

Diagnosing cognitive errors possessed by examinees can be considered as a pattern classification problem that is designed to classify a sequential input of stimuli into one of several predetermined groups. The sequential inputs in this paper's context are item responses, and the predetermined groups are various states of knowledge resulting from…

A study investigated the nature of a sixth-grade community of readers from the emic perspective (participants' point of view). A qualitative interpretive case study was conducted in one sixth-grade language arts classroom with the researcher acting as participant-observer. Data in the form of fieldnotes, interviews, and written samples of…

Working with teachers and artists from Florida to Maine, a drama educator has discovered that creative power and insight can emerge when using drama in the language arts classroom. One seventh-grade class began with simple warm-ups to loosen inhibitions and then moved into a unit that dealt with improvising using movement. A student who had hardly…

This manual presents a training methodology for use in changing pivotal behaviors of children with autism or other severe handicaps. Behaviors specifically addressed for their far ranging effects involve motivation and responsivity to multiple cues. Seven instructional points are detailed with both good and poor implementation examples. The manual…

Findings from a study of junior and high school students' views of Indiana school life are presented in this report. The Indiana Youth Poll was administered to a total of 1,560 students from 204 public and 293 private schools in two stages: (1) to individuals; and (2) to discussion groups of 3 to 6 students. Chapter 1 explores students' views…

Describes the application of the Keller Plan to an introductory physics course. Presents the organization of the course, faculty and student reaction to the course, and an assessment of the course on the basis of student grade distribution. (GS)

The article tabulates data and discusses a study exploring the effects of delays in returning students' assignments in Independent/Correspondence study courses. The hypothesis, that no basic differences would emerge in the students' final grade, was proven. (MW)