Explains the need for a student-centered curriculum. (SW)

Examined the degree of awareness, usage, and satisfaction with student services among lower division undergraduates at a four-year public university, four-year state college, and a two-year community college. Indicated a low degree of utilization of services by freshmen and sophomores but a high degree of awareness of services. (Author/RC)

The author reviews literature on childrens' reactions to perceived failure and offers "learned helplessness" as a model to explain why a child who makes a mistake gives up. Suggestions for preventing these reactions are given. (Author/JMK)

Undergraduate students completed a regular class test of 35 multiple-choice items, interspersed with five humorous verbal items written in multiple-choice format or selected syndicated cartoons. A questionnaire revealed that, although student perceptions of test humor were positive, they were less positive about verbal items. (Author/CM)

Interviews were conducted and tests were administered to determine if students found chemistry or physics easier. Reasons for their choices (including the fact that physics was perceived as relating to the life/world domain) and type knowledge used by the students are discussed. (JN)

A study examined the effects of academic and nonacademic mainstreaming on mildly retarded boys' expectancy of success and outerdirectedness. Children were asked to perform tasks concerning probability learning and imitation. Findings point to the difficulty of drawing conclusions about the effects of mainstreaming and to the importance of…

Discusses successive drafts of a student's response to a short story, illustrating how an initial personal response to literature can be developed into a critical essay with a specific purpose and audience. (HTH)

Fourth grade students in a multicultural art program studied the art of California Indians in cooperation with the social studies program. A survey was conducted to identify the students' responses to learning about the art of another culture. (AM)

Researchers used four token reinforcement systems--tokens only, descriptive praise, self-reinforcement, and a combination of all three--and observed the effect on the problem solving performance of fourth-grade reading students. Only students using the combination reward system maintained their progress after tokens were withdrawn. (Authors/PP)

Analysis of teacher-student exchanges in high school discussion classes revealed that only half of all students' responses exhibited the same cognitive level as the teacher's intervention. The findings are compared to previous studies which together offer little support for the notion of cognitive correspondence between question and answer.…

Suggests a possible unified theory of reading, interpretation, and composition based on recent research in composition combined with the theoretical contributions of reader response critics in literature. Describes a pedagogical program based on this theoretical model that uses students' responses to texts as the center of the course. (JL)

Audio-taped lectures by male or female professors were produced in four versions: no humor; sexual humor; other-disparaging humor; and self-disparaging humor. Male and female students rated lecturers' intelligence and appeal. Intelligence ratings were unaffected by humor variations, but significant lecturer-student sex interactions were found on…

Describes an experimental project where taped stories were presented to secondary pupils for their formal responses. Responses were correlated with age, IQ, and reading ability. In general, older students had higher appreciation and awareness scores, independent of any formal ability factor. Texts of these Australian stories are appended.…

Reports on a pilot investigation of learner feedback and its effects on teacher/learner interactions, based on data collected from 12 ESL dyads and triads. Describes the methods used for data collection and data analysis, the latter involving classification of both learner feedback and teachers' post-feedback responses. (Author/ MES)