In higher education, the practice of "space budgeting" requires departments to pay directly from annual budget allocations for the space they are assigned and use. Goals of space budgeting are defined, some of the issues identified, and alternate approaches suggested. (MLF)

State postsecondary education systems are categorized as (1) separate public service departments; (2) sub-departments of an education department, a state public service; (3) administrative divisions of an education department of a public service; or (4) providers of postsecondary services through corporate institutions and an administrative…

The use of data from the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System to analyze curricula is described, and the results of studies of courses in seven disciplines at 37 public postsecondary institutions are reported. The various kinds of curriculum analysis possible with the three principal files--taxonomy, course inventory, and course detail--are…

Presents results of a statistical analysis of information on the approximately 1,500 software packages currently contained in MicroUse, a database directory for software with library applications. These results include information on software types and their availability, costs, vendors/producers of microcomputer-based software, and…

Describes a study conducted at a Texas elementary school which examined the types of questions second-grade children ask as they are taught to use microcomputers. A classification of questions into eight categories indicates children asked most about keyboard, data entry, and meaning of program instructions. (MBR)

Describes the development of a domain-referenced system intended to both describe and classify current writing assignments and to create composition assignments. (HOD)

Presents findings from a search of 21 years of National Society for Performance and Instruction (NSPI) publications and conference programs undertaken to determine yearly trends in number of articles and talks, organizational affiliations of speakers and writers, types of presentations, and topics. A context taxonomy and recommendations are…

A total of 40 adults and 120 children from grades 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, and 12 were tested in a release from proactive inhibition task for their appreciation of the relations among words belonging to categories of differing levels of generality. The same subjects were subsequently tested with the same words in an equivalence task requiring verbal…

Details a study in which high school students were introduced to a categorization strategy for vocabulary terms related to literary analysis. Concludes that the strategy was a worthwhile addition to the traditional Socratic approach to literary analysis. (FL)

An analysis of the kinds and uses of laughter in five adult introductory foreign language classes is presented. The importance of this form of nonverbal communication in the teaching situation is examined in the context of classroom ritual's effects on learners' nonverbal behavior. (MSE)

Examination of the way in which children conceive the development of animals shows that there are parallels among concepts of development with those of the periods of concrete operations and formal operations. The conception of development seems to advance further in the subsequent period of dialectical thought. (MS)

In this report, the authors aim to review and advance knowledge of systematic ways of classifying thinking skills. They concentrate on taxonomies and theory-based frameworks, in the belief that studying and using them will promote better understanding of how people think and learn at the age of 16 or above. Their overarching interest is in how…

This is one of few professional books that addresses the subject of stuttering in young children. This is surprising considering that most cases of stuttering begin in the preschool years and that the prevalence of the disorder in very young children is higher than in any other age group. This excellent and informative text is written for…

Different item response theory (IRT) models may be employed for item calibration. Change of testing vendors, for example, may result in the adoption of a different model than that previously used with a testing program. To provide scale continuity and preserve cut score integrity, item parameter estimates from the new model must be linked to the…

In a project on the development of performance assessments in science, researchers have developed four types of assessment: comparative, component identification, classification, and observation. They have noted that assessments belonging to the same type of task can be scored for the same performance properties. This paper reports on the…