Eight coaches of oral interpretation from colleges across the United States were asked to tape record the coaching sessions that brought eight novices to tournament readiness. All of the students used the same three-poem program on the general theme of animals and children, but each student was required to write the introduction and transitions.…

A 2-year study of mathematics performance of sixth-grade students was conducted to: (1) determine the extent to which previously reported sex differences in California data exist and influence student response; (2) examine the predominant successful and unsuccessful strategies used by sixth-grade students in solving story problems; (3) discover to…

Two studies examined the effects of different types of imaginal elaborations on recall. In Experiment 1, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and college adults were given 20 word pairs embedded in one of four types of sentences: short plausible, bizarre, personalized, or self-generated. With no mention of a memory test, subjects were asked to use the…

Is college student academic performance harmed by competing employment obligations? At what point do the hours spent on the job begin to interfere with the predicted academic achievement of full-time students? This study addresses these questions by analyzing data collected from students at two non-residential community colleges. Using an outcomes…

This paper describes the Teacher Assessment Project at Stanford University, which is currently examining the use of performance-based methods for assessing teachers' competence. The research outlined in this work-in-progress explores the feasibility of documenting teaching through the use of portfolios. The paper identifies three…

How different institutions conceive of and construct knowledge is examined by delineating how they enact their conception of knowledge through curriculum. The contention of Burton Clark and others that disciplinary activity is primarily responsible for fomenting knowledge production is argued. It is suggested that institutions have a more powerful…

This study examines research related to factors which influence achievement at the kindergarten level. It also attempts to increase awareness of kindergarten programs which make a child's first experience in school a positive one. The main portion of this paper consists of an annotated bibliography of 34 references divided into four sections. The…

To analyze the usefulness of forensics judges' written comments and to understand how to improve ballots, a content analysis of 175 ballots from schools in a competition district was conducted. Categories for analysis included the following: (1) quantity of comments; (2) format of the ballot; (3) types of comments (including selection,…

The expert system computer simulation detailed in this report is designed to investigate patterns of valuing in decision-making about dossiers of performance data used in teacher promotion evaluations. The knowledge base for the simulation consists of 111 questions organized into 117 rules. The questions and linked advice were derived from…

This study was designed to determine forensics students' ability to predict accurately how judges they knew from previous tournaments would rank them in rounds of competitive individual events. The study examined the following hypotheses: (1) contestants can predict how they will do in rounds of competition; and (2) contestants in prepared oral…

Addressing the question, "What can be done to promote school achievement?", this paper summarizes the literature on motivation relating to classroom achievement and school effectiveness. Particular attention is given to how values, ideology, and various cultural patterns impinge on classroom performance and serve to enhance motivation to achieve.…

This study explores the use of the adjunct question paradigm in self-instruction and distance education materials. The subjects were 187 high school students who read text passages and answered one high level (implication or inference) or low level (verbatim or paraphrase) question. These questions were either inserted in the text or massed at the…

Teacher performance areas, criteria for evaluating them, and specific descriptors of behavior satisfying each criterion are supplied in this document. Performance areas and criteria for teacher evaluation were selected by the five school districts participating in the School Improvement Model project. The teacher performance areas selected for…

Guidelines are presented for implementing the self-evaluation model for instructional programs developed at American River College (ARC). After stating the reasons for conducting program reviews, the paper describes ARC's model, which uses a mini-accreditation approach to assess the extent of goal attainment within a broad category of activities…

In contrast to linear models of human judgment developed for predictive purposes which are characteristically insensitive to the exact values of the weights utilized in them, the Linear Multiple Regression Models used for policy capturing are assumed to reflect significant aspects of the subjects' judgmental policies. This latter kind of modelling…