Teacher education, when viewed along a professional continuum from preservice level to beginning level to experienced level, involves a socialization phenomenon which is only minimally described or understood by the profession. Several aspects of the socialization process--career rewards, levels of professional concern, and perceptions of the…

The classroom environment elicits social comparison behavior in which a student uses peers' performance as a gauge for his own self-assessment. Social comparison as it relates to ability is a four phase sequential process. In phase one, stimulation of social comparison is elicited through developmentally-determined cognitive capacities and motives…

Sex differences on Perry's stages of epistemological development were investigated in a study of 100 freshmen (50 men and 50 women) at a large midwestern university. A semi-structured interview probed six domains related to Perry's theory, including the role of the learner, instructor, and peers in the learning situation, the question of…

A three-part empirical study analyzed (1) the communication structure of a university faculty, (2) faculty roles, and (3) factors and dimensions of faculty perceptions. In the first phase, 389 faculty members at a large southwestern university responded to three questionnaires mailed at intervals to determine respondents' sex, academic degree,…

This book presents 36 case studies, based on data gathered from first-year teachers throughout the country, that provide direct involvement with some of the most common and important experiences new teachers face. By typing together practice and theory in the study of real problems, prospective teachers will be able to: (1) identify and use major…

A total of 23 American and Hmong-American preschool children from 2 day care center classrooms were observed during free play in an effort to determine the proportion of positive, negative, and neutral initiations made to peers as a function of sex and cultural background. A series of weighted, two-way analyses of variance were performed on…

The study looked at differences between groups of children identified as high visibility rejected (HVR) and low visibility rejected (LVR) on a sociometric measure with 952 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students. Questionnaires were analyzed to determine the number of positive and negative nominations from peers received by each child. HVR…

If personal networks of only children differ from those of children with siblings, then study of the different patterns of personal association is especially relevant to the understanding of social change in China, where the population of children without siblings is rapidly increasing. A study of these differential social networks used data…

This study explored differences between families with children educated at home and those with children in public schools, and examined the educational and socialization values and practices of different subgroups of homeschoolers. Subjects were 70 homeschooling parents and 20 nonhomeschooling parents who completed a questionnaire assessing…

This document is a curriculum guide for a Peer Counseling course in the Orange County, Florida Public Schools system. The course, Peer Counseling, is an 18-week elective course for eighth graders which can be repeated as Peer Counseling II during the second semester of the year. The major emphasis of this course is to help students become more…

Early personality and environmental characteristics that predict later problematic aggression and depression in children were investigated longitudinally. A developmental psychopathology approach was taken. (This approach assumes that patterns of adaptation and maladaptation in development can best be understood when explored simultaneously and…

Focusing on the role of intertextuality as young children learn to communicate through writing, art, and music during the course of usual classroom activities, an ethnographic study investigated: (1) how children's understanding and use of written language, music, and graphic/constructive art are embedded in the social worlds of their classroom;…

Results of a survey of residential students at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, are presented, along with recommendations based on the findings. The Student Housing Evaluation was designed to assess student attitudes about the university's housing policy, facilities, and staff. The 610 respondents (46% response rate) consisted of a…

Recently, the traditional school structure has been harshly scrutinized for several key defects, including bureaucratic rules and regulations, professional isolation of teaching staff, evaluation systems irrelevant to instructional improvement, low teacher participation in decision making, and noncooperation between teachers and administrators.…

The transition to junior high school can be a positive step toward increasing maturity, and a stressful period of adaptation as well. To investigate the contribution of friendships to children's adjustment after the transition to junior high school, students (N=101) from four elementary schools were tested during the spring of sixth grade, in the…