Interest is growing in naturalistic inquiry and qualitative methods in educational inquiry. Naturalistic inquiry refers to a paradigm of inquiry with two major features: a low degree of manipulation or control of the variables prior to the inquiry and a low degree of constraints imposed on the outcomes of the inquiry. Qualitative methods seek to…

Drawing on 2 months of intensive research in a network-affiliate newsroom, this paper describes how the researcher coped with studying newswork by qualitative and quantitative methods within a naturalistic paradigm and addresses methodological issues facing the naturalistic researcher. The paper discusses the following five methodological issues:…

Research on elementary teaching practices has provided a list of effective teacher behaviors. This list can be used as a menu from which administrators and teachers can select objectives that will serve the teachers as goals for improvement and the administrators as criteria for teacher evaluation. The behaviors listed in this paper have been…

Reported in this paper are results from two studies undertaken to explore the impact of parental age on childrearing practices. The first study involved administering the Child Rearing Practices Report to 65 adult participants, then asking the participants to describe their parents' childrearing attitudes. Results suggest that those respondents…

Described in this report are the design and implementation of manipulative tasks developed to decrease the number of aggressive acts among kindergarten children during play time. A total of 17 kindergarten boys and girls randomly selected from three kindergarten classes were observed once a week over a period of 6 weeks by two observers recording…

Research has demonstrated that a person's attraction to a stranger is influenced by experimental manipulations suggested by general behavior theory. To examine whether a neutral observer, listening to a conversation between two strangers, could be influenced by the manipulation of several learning variables, 80 female undergraduates listened to a…

Issues of academic plagiarism in educational institutions are often played out in the public arena. Media reports that "scandals" occur in universities where plagiarism has gone undetected, or unpunished can undermine public faith in the academic integrity of higher education. Antiplagiarism software has been successfully marketed to…

Describes a program which was designed to encourage childern with cleft palates to verbalize experiences through creative dramatics. (SET)

Utilizing observational field research methodology, two special education teachers were observed daily for a year. Observations were analyzed to describe the teachers' role in the school system. Analysis suggested that issues such as system norms and teacher's creditability were important to effectiveness of mainstreaming. Sensitiveness to…

Preschool children were rated in a variety of classroom situations to determine if they displayed consistent behaviors within and across settings. Each assessment was based on a 15-minute observation of the child. Results suggest that enduring response patterns can be identified, but only in relation to particular situations. (Author/CS)

From "Educational Leadership/Research Supplement, v2 n5 May 1969, edited by the Research Council of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (James Raths, Chairman).

The Behavior Observation Scale (BOS) was administered to 53 autistic children, 35 mentally retarded children matched for MA, and 33 normal children (all 2 to 5 years old) in an attempt to quantify autistic behavior. Ss were observed 3 days for 3 minutes through a one way mirror in a playroom setting where occurrence of 67 behaviors on the BOS was…

A training manual is presented to insure reliable use of the Assessments of Performance in Teaching (APT) observational evaluation instrument. The 24-hour training program's major instructional method requires round-table discussions of observations. Videotaped teacher demonstrations are required for practice and criterion assessments. The…