The voice of the government via the Reading Excellence Act gives the message that direct systematic intense phonics instruction will solve the reading problem, end debate, lead to student success in life beyond school, and provide teachers with the prestige of successful reading instruction. This paper takes a close look at systematic direct…

This handbook has been built around the experiences of teachers and cognitive psychologists working together in opera education to identify, design, and produce an effective approach to bring together the divergent approaches to assessment and evaluation, mandated testing, and authentic documentation of learning. The handbook is designed to…

This paper describes a study of a speech community, a group of approximately 10 women, aged 25 to 65, who met at least 3 times a month to knit, drink coffee, and chat. The paper notes that knitting circles have survived through history because they serve a social function that surpasses historical events--they are communities that co-construct the…

The Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) was created by the Evaluation Group of the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT) as an observational instrument designed to measure "reformed" teaching. This document is a guide to its use. The theoretical concepts that guided the development of the…

This paper examines how teachers begin to think about ethics. A partnership between one elementary educator and one doctoral student writing her dissertation on educational ethics was formed. The project has grown to include four vantage points, or sightlines for viewing this issue. The four views come: (1) through the lenses provided by the…

This report, written in French and German, provides an evaluation of a pilot program, begun during the 1999-2000 school year, in which Kindergarten students (aged 5 to 6 years) in the French-speaking town of Cressier and the German-speaking town of Jeuss-Lurtigen-Salvenach, both in the bilingual Fribourg/Freiburg Canton of Switzerland,received 10%…

A research project explored the potential of collegial coaching and reflective dialogue as mechanisms for school leaders to use to significantly alter the organizational context so that cultural change might occur. The study investigated the possibility that collegial coaching, reflection, and dialogue about teaching practices may provide an…

This paper focuses on the utilization of reflective teaching and thinking as a tool to engage teachers in the process of observing, examining, analyzing, and evaluating their philosophy of teaching and learning and their effectiveness as teachers. Research has indicated that reflection encourages teachers to assess critically "What am I…

Language is a child's major tool for learning about the world. This book presents a naturalistic case study of one child's use of language from two-and-a-half to five years, drawing on systemic functional theory to argue that cognitive development is essentially a linguistic process and offering a new description and interpretation of linguistic…

This report summarizes the data obtained through the administration of the Observation Survey (M. Clay) as part of the K-2 Student Assessment Portfolio of the Durham Public Schools, North Carolina, during the second year of data collection. The database contained a total of 7,752 students in kindergarten through grade 2. The Observation Survey…

This monograph was originally prepared as a thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy at Clark University, and in its original form was accepted by the faculty of that institution in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree. It presents an unusually comprehensive survey of the provisions for agricultural education and for…

Four evaluation techniques, illustrated with examples in the field, can be used to discover how people interact with their environment, what they like and dislike about it, and what kind of environment they would prefer. (Author/MF)

Professor playfully pursues the possibilities of lesson planning; pedants and other pundits may peruse his premises with profit! (Editor)

Offered to aid the regular teacher in the identification of symptomatic behaviors of learning disabled or otherwise handicapped children is a behavior guide organized into six behavioral categories: visual behavior, motor behavior, graphics, physical health, multisensory skills, and socio-emotional behavior. (DB)

Major findings were that: contingent reinforcement was effective in altering behavior; instructions did not augment the efficacy of contingent reinforcement; noncontingent reinforcement was effective for nondeviant students who were told that the reinforcement was actually contingent; and contingent reinforcement led to greater generalization than…