To explore the possibility that the gender make-up of a class may predict the gender specificity of the language used by instructors, a study examined Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTA) and the number of gender examples they used. Subjects were eight graduate teaching assistants instructing a basic speech communication course and seven GTAs…

This study investigated the extent to which negative behaviors that could affect the supervisory climate for student teachers were practiced by college supervisors and supervising teachers. Researchers collected data over two years with two different sets of student teachers. During the 1996-1997 school year, 21 student teachers participated, and…

This study focused on the topic of home visits from the teacher's perspective. A survey was distributed among 40 teachers who were randomly selected from New York City schools. These teachers were from Head Start, day care settings, and public and private schools. The survey focused on whether teachers find home visits to be an effective tool in…

Participants at a conference on mathematics teaching discussed what it means to know and understand a subject and what teachers need to know, understand, and believe in order to teach a subject to elementary learners. The first section of the report covers the first day of the conference that was spent in a series of whole-group sessions.…

An ethnographic study examined instructor uses of control, immediacy, and affinity-seeking behaviors in a large college lecture class. A class of 140 college sophomores was observed for 10 weeks, in an attempt to understand in a situational and non-quantitative manner, what instructor behaviors motivate students toward cognitive and affective…

This study evaluated 90 junior high level public school teachers' interactive verbal behavior in response to three seating arrangements (row, herringbone, and u-shaped) across four dimensions: frequency of indirect teacher talk, frequency of direct teacher talk, frequency of student talk, and silence or confusion. Results indicate that: (1)…

A descriptive study used survey methodology to determine first-grade teachers' theoretical orientations toward reading and students' attitudes toward reading, as well as structured classroom observations to describe teachers' reading instructional practices. Subjects, 259 of the 428 first-grade teachers (61%) in 94 elementary schools of a large…

This paper examines remediation as the product of perceptions and beliefs about literacy and learning. It illustrates some ways teachers inadvertently participate in constructing inaccurate and limiting notions of learners as being cognitively defective and in need of "remedy," and thus limit classroom learning. It combines an empirical,…

This paper suggests a new way to approach the study style in instructional communication. First, the paper reviews and critiques existing approaches to communication style research. Following that it is suggested that a fundamental limitation of existitng approaches is that researchers have typically superimposed conventional criteria for teaching…

Teachers have a special trust with students that includes not taking advantage of or abusing them. To ensure that sexual abuse is handled correctly in the school system, a policy must be adopted that requires employees to report incidences of abuse and make sure that the reporting requirement is balanced against the accused individual's rights.…

A teacher looking back on an exciting and learning-packed year (in which she and her class participated in a research project on how students learn and think about literature) saw permanent change in herself and her students. The notions of "stances" and "scaffolding" forever changed the way the teacher planned her literature units. Watching and…

This paper speculates about research findings that can be potentially powerful as content for preservice teacher education and influential upon the delivery of that content to prospective teachers. The primary source for the research findings which appear in the paper is the body of information prepared for the conference "Research on…

Utilizing a behavioral approach to classroom management, this book provides effective methods for preventing and remediating student misbehaviors. These tested and proven management strategies are highlighted with actual case studies of behavior problems involving average and exceptional students from elementary and secondary settings. Teacher,…

Following a review of research endeavors in the area of teacher evaluation and performance assessment, some procedures which have been developed at the University of Toledo (Ohio) to discriminate between competent and incompetent teachers are described. The university's program is competency-based, and researchers have identified 49 competencies…

Observations of 90 lessons reveal the limitations of the whole-class discussion, the dominant teaching method in elementary and secondary schools. In addition to producing a low percentage of student involvement, rarely more than 50%, teachers' questions and answer techniques do not usually stimulate critical thinking. Besides most often asking…