This thesis describes a peer observation program implemented among American and Japanese teachers in the English Department of Hiroshima College of Foreign Languages, a two-year vocational college in Hiroshima, Japan. Each participant functioned as both an observer and observee, while pre- and post-observation meetings were held between the…

This study examined the attitudes of 140 children ages 2 through 7 toward mixed-age grouping in a Slovenian kindergarten (preschool) setting. On four consecutive Friday mornings the children, normally grouped in classes aged 2-3 years, 3-4 years, 4-5 years, and 5-7 years, were given the opportunity to switch classes and play among children of…

This study used ethnographic methods to examine current explanations of Asian American students' success in school and how a group of high-achieving Chinese American high school freshmen perceive themselves and others as learners and as group members. The study attempts to illustrate (1) how the students view educational achievement and group…

This study examined high-aggressive and low-aggressive boys' ratings of the effectiveness of aggressive and assertive strategies for solving social problems involving hypothetical peers and actual peers. Subjects were 66 third-grade boys (11 groups of 6 boys each for a total of 22 high-aggressive, 22 low-aggressive, and 22 average aggressive boys)…

This study examined bias in children's perceptions of the similarities between themselves and others. Participants included 346 fourth and fifth graders, and their teachers, from 5 schools. Students rated same-sex classmates on a 4-point scale that assessed how similar or different the subjects felt their classmates were. Several days later,…

It has been suggested that adolescents in the United States do not get enough individual attention and guidance from adults. This study was conducted to investigate the relationships adolescents have with adult friends or mentors. Eighth- and ninth-grade students (N=299) completed anonymous surveys about discussing important things with other…

This study examined the relationship between children's experiences of domestic violence and their adjustment at school. Sixty-three children (28 girls), in Israel, their classmates and teachers took part in the study. Children were divided into four groups: (1) those who were victims of physical abuse; (2) those who witnessed abuse; (3) those who…

The paper reports on studies involving children having the rare chronic skin diseases of hemangiomas and epidermolysis bullosa (characterized by easy blistering). One study compared the self-concept and psychosocial development of young (mean age 46 months) children (N=19) with hemangiomas with 19 children without hemangiomas. Findings indicated…

The brief paper summarizes the 1983 report, "Social Integration of Moderately Handicapped Students through Cooperative Goal Structuring: Influence of Teacher Instruction on Cooperation" by JoAnne Putnam. Techniques for constructing group learning activities using cooperative goal structuring are broken down into the following steps: (1)…

This book describes how talk is used to build social organization within face-to-face interaction among a group of urban black children, an analysis providing the opportunity to study language, culture, and social organization from an integrated perspective. Children from a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood were tape-recorded during peer-group…

How Greek Australian children and their parents feel about the public schools and about their own role in and acceptance by the larger Australian society is the focus of this report. Through liberal quotations from interviews, their feelings about the following areas are presented: (1) the manner in which decisions to leave or remain at school are…

This study examined the roles, functions, and effectiveness of a group of teachers who became Instructional Leaders (ILs), assuming major responsibility for assuring the implementation of a voluntary school improvement program within their respective schools. The program, called SITIP (School Improvement Through Instructional Process), and…

This book is about a set of alternatives to the traditional instructional system: cooperative learning methods. These are techniques that use cooperative task structures, in which students spend much of their class time working in 4-6 member heterogeneous groups. These learning methods also use cooperative incentive structures, in which students…

This paper reports on a year-long study of two preschool children's patterns of social adjustment and peer response. The theoretical orientation of the paper is interactionist. Patterns of adjustment and group response are described as social constructions which stigmatized the two children studied. The 24 children in the group came from…

This longitudinal study examined the differences between extremely popular children and their peers, and the persistence of the patterns of differences. Teachers identified 19 extremely popular children in kindergarten through sixth grade. These students were compared with 38 randomly selected children from the teachers' classes. A…