The proceedings of the 1979 Lifelong Learning Research Conference held at the University of Maryland are reported in this document. Focusing upon non-formal adult education, the papers presented deal with environmental/leisure education issues, adult/continuing education concerns, community development, international education, volunteerism, and…

The State Criminal Justice Telecommunications (STACOM) project has developed techniques for the identification and analysis of user requirements and designs for networks for the dissemination of criminal justice information on a state-wide basis. Techniques developed for user requirements analysis include methods for determining data required,…

Naturalistic ethnographic research methods useful for the study of the dynamics of effective college teaching are discussed based on the findings of an ethnographic study. Naturalistic research methods were used in the study to understand better the task and social dimensions of a college classroom. Lessons were studied in the classroom as they…

Reviewing five large-scale investigations of educational dissemination and change, this report synthesizes and consolidates their findings and implications around an issue of common interest to policymakers, program administrators, and researchers: what can be learned from these studies about processes and procedures that facilitate knowledge…

A two-phase investigation of characteristics associated with student achievement in elementary and secondary reading centers in the Houston (Texas) Independent School District is described and evaluated in this paper. After presenting background information about the centers, the paper describes the first phase of the investigation, which revealed…

The lack of rigorous evaluations and variations in operation of adolescent diversion programs has led to a state of confusion concerning the effects of diversion. In a program at Michigan State University, youths referred to the project from the juvenile court are randomly assigned to undergraduates who are trained and supervised by project…

The document contains two essays on art and aesthetic education. The first examines the ideology of art education from the standpoint of phenomenological sociology. Using this approach, the researcher can adopt an ethnographic, historical, and/or cross-cultural approach to analyze how a phenomenon (for example, an ideology of art education)…

Three considerations form the basis of an ecological theory of teaching: activity structures, student participation styles, and social cognitive development. To explore this theory scholars met in seminars, each bringing the concepts and perspectives of his discipline or area of inquiry. This report contains a synthesis of responses from twelve…

The purpose of this document is to explore some strategies which may be helpful to new projects during their planning and implementation years. Each chapter of the document is composed of a separate project description. Topics discussed in this paper include: 1) the adaptation of educational research to improve elementary reading comprehension; 2)…

Methods of the 1976-77 Expanded Eligibility Survey, which was conducted for the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California System, are described. The survey was undertaken as a supplement to the 1976 High School Eligibility Study. A subsample of the 1976 Eligibility Study graduates was mailed questionnaires to determine…

This volume, second in a series of five, focuses on methods to evaluate sex education programs. It is presented in five chapters. Chapter One critically reviews previously used methods of evaluating programs and makes suggestions for improving those evaluations. Problems of experimental designs which incorporate an experimental/control group and…

A user's guide for the McGill Evaluation System of instructional evaluation and a bibliography are presented. The guide covers the initial planning of an evaluation, data collection, and making changes in a course or program. The procedure used in the system contains the following sequential steps: describing the purpose of the evaluation,…

The principal sociological frameworks used in energy research on developing countries can be appraised in terms of the view of the energy-rural development problem that each framework implies. "Socio-Technical Analysis," which is used most in industrial and organizational sociology and in ecological anthropology, is oriented to the decomposition…

Interactive Research and Development on Teaching (IR&DT) was initially proposed as an alternative to linear educational research and development strategies that often resulted in irrelevant, uninterpretable, time consuming research that did not actively involve teachers. This paper reports on the insights gained from implementing the IR&DT…

Moderate success of individualized programs for severely and profoundly mentally retarded persons in a library setting is documented in this report. These programs were developed following a survey tabulation and analysis of individual education programs, individual program plans, programs assessment chart profiles, and psychological and speech…