Eleven middle school teachers' planning and classroom activities for the first day of the school year were examined through interviews, written lesson plans, and classroom observations. The purpose was to identify factors in planning and to identify relationships among planning and classroom management on the first day and throughout the first 8…

This paper provides a general overview of a major study of student absenteeism as well as a narrower look at the problems associated with measuring student absences. The study data came from questionnaires completed by students, teachers, and administrators at six high schools in two urban districts in the western United States; interviews with…

The Teacher Assessment and Development System (TADS) - Meritorious Teacher Program (MTP) FORM instrument is used in the Dade County Public Schools, Miami, Florida, to evaluate teachers. Its validity for decisions concerning merit pay for master teachers was examined in this study. Specifically, its ability to discriminate between high performing…

Repertory grid technique and extensive interviews were used to investigate the personal constructs of mathematics and mathematics teaching held by four preservice secondary mathematics teachers. Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and Perry's developmental scheme provided frameworks for analysis of the experiential, pedagogical, and mathematical…

This seven-section report examines the pension-related behavior of older public employees, particularly California teachers. Section I introduces the benefit option situation. Section II surveys previous studies focusing on the relationship between Social Security wealth and the probability of retirement. Section III describes the California State…

A study explored teachers' descriptions of themselves and of children to whom they were attached or for whom they felt rejection. Forty-two elementary classroom teachers (11 male and 31 female) from 16 different schools identified 3 "attachment" students and 3 "rejection" students using 5 personality descriptors and 5 physical descriptors. Two…

A study tested the hypothesis that elementary school teachers who were less authoritarian in their beliefs were more effective in the classroom. The independent variable was the California F-scale score of the 142 subjects (all education graduates of Tennessee Technological University), while dependent variables were measures of classroom…

Research evidence indicates that one important variable in learning or development is the degree of match between relevant learner and environment characteristics. It has been argued that, to provide learning environments that would match student characteristics, teachers should be able to understand and identify the relevant characteristics of…

The manual describes wellness as building a lifestyle based on a conscious commitment to accept responsibility for one's own health and for the way things turn out in one's life, and offers educators several inventory instruments for examining and changing their own lifestyle and the level of support for wellness in the school community. The…

This book addresses specific classroom management problems. Similar problems are grouped into chapters and are approached from the classroom teacher's point of view. Each problem is defined and discussed as to why it is a concern to a classroom teacher. This is followed by an analysis of the various approaches which a teacher can use to solve the…

A group of 11 experienced junior high school teachers, identified as having problems with classroom management, received materials and workshops based on findings from a large-scale descriptive study of classroom management. Observation data from two classes per teacher were used to assess the level of implementation by treatment group teachers.…

Organizational characteristics of two universities and two public school systems, as these characteristics related to student teaching, were compared at two levels: (1) the formal, documented guidelines, or "what's supposed to happen"; and (2) the informal, working practices, or "what's really going on" in the settings. This paper reports on…

High school social studies students (n=160) were each assigned to 1 of 8 groups defined by possible combinations of 2 teacher uncertainty conditions (uncertainty vs. no uncertainty), 2 teacher "bluffing" conditions (bluffing vs. no bluffing), and 2 lecture notes conditions (students receive lecture notes handout vs. students do not…

Meaningful stress management efforts should include analysis of both organizational and individual factors. Results of a June 1982 survey of 130 teachers in 4 Buffalo (New York) school district elementary schools indicate that feelings of organizationally based stress did not vary significantly according to such demographic variables as sex or…

Based on evaluation of studies on nonverbal aspects of communication in instructional settings, a teacher training program was developed for nonverbal perceptiveness and expressiveness. An experimental study was conducted to test the effect of the program on secondary school preservice teachers (N=34). Focus was upon vocal delivery, eye contact,…