A study was conducted to test the effectiveness of a preschool program which emphasized rapid attainment of basic academic concepts. The experimentals were 4- to 5-year-old lower class, predominantly Negro, children. For 2 years they received instruction 2 hours daily, 5 times a week, in a group where the pupil-teacher ratio was five to one. To…

This set of workshop materials and activities is designed for persons who teach academic and clinical courses to students in professional allied health programs. The workshop consists of a set of short didactic and more extensive experiential activities. The workshop is organized into four main parts. Each part is labeled an activity. The first…

This issue of "Insights Into Open Education" investigates various aspects of the problems and potential of mainstreaming handicapped children into the regular school program. Brekke, in an article entitled "How Can Teachers Begin to Meet the Special Needs of Mainstreamed Children in the Regular Classroom?" asserts that teachers must concentrate on…

Junior high schools boys performed forty trials on a ball roll up game in order to determine whether competition, initial ability level, and social reinforcement interact to influence the performance of a perceptual motor task. The analysis of the data demonstrated: (a) the competition, initial ability level, and social reinforcement factors did…

The paper proposes that when behavior change is the major target of an adult education program, the designer must consider three factors: (1) the four basic targets for behavior change efforts (behavior goals and plans, basic knowledge and skills needed for successful performance, physical environment, reinforcers of behavior); (2) individual…

A program for modifying classroom behavior of emotionally disturbed and other children (in grades 3 through 7) based on modeling is described, and specific behaviors and evaluation items for the program are provided along with their rationale. Research is reviewed in Part I and topics are covered, such as: the three effects of modeling…

Some educators are turning to the process of contingency management within a classroom as a short term, immediate motivator which can work for virtually every student, regardless of his/her final grade in the course. Contingency management consists of providing a set of alternatives from which those chosen by the student reward the students in…

This study used a classroom interaction system to code three 20-minute episodes in each of 40 elementary classrooms. The procedure was followed in October and again in May. An analysis was made to investigate the relationships between aspects of teacher praise and student participation in classroom discussions. Findings indicated that (a) praise…

Presented are three examples of the use of the behavior model to provide special education within regular high school classrooms. The first example describes a math teacher's use of minimum objectives and free-time reinforcement in individual contingency and team contingency situations to motivate students to complete assignments. It is explained…

This study evaluated the use of three systematic reinforcement techniques and measures (a carrel, teacher attention, and a contingency contract) to increase the on-task and task completion behaviors of a first-grade child. The carrel and teacher attention increased on-task behavior (from a mean of 27.6 percent to 45.0 percent) but did not affect…

An Arab Culture Assimilator, basically a branching type of learning program, was administered to forty-seven subjects in two groups involved in a cross-cultural field study in order to determine the differing effects of varied social reinforcement on learning performance. The conditions of reinforcement were: correct, positive; incorrect,…

This study attempted to replicate the findings of Moore, Gagne, and Hauck (1973) and to test the developmental assumption of the two-stage motivational theory proposed by Moore, Means, and Gagne (1972) concerning the effect of combination expectancy-feedback communications. Fourth and second grade subjects were administered five pairs of these…

The purpose of the study was to test the discriminative cue hypothesis by attempting to train pupils to increase effort following a high expectancy condition and to reduce effort following a low expectancy condition. Fourth grade high-IQ low achievers were used as subjects in the study, because the authors felt that while they would learn fast,…

Three studies were carried out to explore and evaluate alternative methods of meeting the objectives of a bilingual education project. The first study explored children's book usage behaviors and how these behaviors were influenced by the requirement to fill out book reports and a reward reinforcement. It was found (1) that fewer children sampled…

The primary goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of two distinctly different techniques, restatement and interpretation, on a criterion variable of counseling. The study objectives were: 1) to operationally define these two classes of counselor response and train two counselors to produce them upon cue in a counseling session, using…