A description is given of the Descriptive Review Process, a method of analyzing a teacher's personal style in order to promote teacher development and improvement. The process combines teacher self-evaluation with evaluation by an observer and a chairperson. The emphasis of the process is on the teacher. The teacher's role in the process involves:…

Changes in teacher behavior in response to different types of feedback were examined. Subjects were faculty members from a two-year college. Five types of feedback were selected: (1) videotapes made during one class period; (2) the Bellack system, which provides the teacher with an observer-made graph of frequencies of teacher and student…

This study examined the relationship between teachers' beliefs and intentions about the importance of teacher-child interactions. The participants were 71 early childhood teachers who had worked with children ages 35 for an average of 9 years (range 0-29). Roughly 35% of the teachers had majored in early childhood education, and 63% held at least…

A study explored the general patterns of discourse during discussions of literature in secondary classrooms, and investigated teachers' and students' perceptions of the purposes that guide those discussions. Six teacher-researchers each studied one teacher as that teacher taught an instructional unit on a literary text, videotaping class sessions,…

A study investigated the types of in-class, speaking-oriented activities that second language learners find anxiety-producing and the types of instructor practices that students perceive as anxiety-reducing. A 4-page questionnaire was administered to 135 university-level students of intensive Spanish and 109 high school students in first- and…

The purpose of this study was the examination of the field-dependent cognitive style as it relates to differences in learning within an analytical, concept-based physical education curriculum. Subjects were 52 elementary school students in the second grade who scored in the fourth quartile on the Children's Group Embedded Figures Test. Observation…

Pupil control (discipline) takes on different forms in different schools, and among different teachers in the same school. Pupil control has been described as existing along a continuum from humanistic to custodial. The prototype of the custodial orientation is the school that provides a rigid and highly controlled setting concerned primarily with…

A study explored contextual influences upon the writing of students in their final year of secondary schooling. Six teachers in 6 subject areas and 12 students enrolled in 2 or more of these 6 classes were selected as case studies. The researcher spent an academic year observing the contexts in which writing occurred, recording class sessions,…

Teacher education institutions in Nigeria play an important role in meeting the demands for positive value orientation. Value orientation is described as the inculcation of moral and ethical values that can establish a distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood, and justice and injustice in social relations. It is…

This paper examines the nature of student engagement in the instructional activities of eighth- and ninth-grade English classes and draws general conclusions applicable to instruction at all levels. It focuses on the teacher's pivotal role, showing that certain discourse practices elicit substantive (rather than procedural) student engagement,…

Teaching practices and professional and personal characteristics of 49 effective first-grade teachers, and the materials they used, were studied in an effort to determine what effective teachers do to promote learning in reading and mathematics. Data indicated that effective teachers: (1) had high expectations for student learning; (2) provided…

A study was conducted to discover what expert teachers do to promote and maintain effective discipline in their classrooms. The research took place in four secondary schools in Scotland. A random sample of students (aged 12-16 years) in each of the schools were asked to write the names of the three teachers in the school who were best at getting…

This paper puts forth techniques for the promotion of reflection which can be used in university seminars for preservice teachers. The techniques are based on the idea of reframing, i.e., looking at experiences from a new perspective. From a cognitive psychological point of view, this means that the person's cognitions about a situation or…