The purpose of this paper is to account for some of the results from a contrastive study of Spanish and Danish communicative behavior, where the focus of attention has been directed towards the microlevel of discourse in order to find recurrent patterns in the local management of conversation. The use of speaker and hearer references, topic…

A self-instructional package for a unit in ritual behavior and belief systems for a community college cultural anthropology course is presented along with a discussion of its development. The first sections of the paper describe the objectives, procedures, and implications of the packet's development, indicating that conceptual references…

Focusing on humor as a powerful instructional resource, this booklet addresses a variety of issues regarding humor in the elementary and secondary classroom. Thirteen ways in which humor can help teachers to achieve educational goals are presented, specifically that it (1) attracts attention and provokes thought, (2) liberates creative capacities,…

Aware of some educators' concerns that computers isolate children and are too abstract for chilren under the age of eight, two studies investigated young children's use of LOGO and their interactions with the computer. Data were collected on kindergartners working in a public school computer lab and on preschoolers using computers in a…

This study surveyed students in grades 7-12 in eight Alaskan school districts. The study was designed to obtain information on the use or nonuse of a broad spectrum of chemical substances, ranging from legal, socially sanctioned drugs for those of legal age such as alcohol and tobacco, to illegal and unsanctioned drugs taken for nonmedical…

Conducted as part of a research program examining teachers' use of compliance gaining strategies to control specific student misbehaviors, a study investigated the strategies used by experienced teachers in dealing with student misbehaviors. The purpose was to compare the findings with those of an earlier study with prospective teachers. Subjects…

The study examines and compares free/spontaneous play behaviors of 20 Hispanic (from Ponce, Puerto Rico) and 20 Anglo (from State College, Pennsylvania) 5-year-old children from middle class socioeconomic strata. Within each of the groups there were 10 boys and 10 girls. Each child was observed in a group play setting in four observational…

A review of studies on black youth indicates a need for more attention to research concerns such as theory development, carefully constructed methodologies, and sensitivity to the interrelatedness among and between demographic variables. Some topics, like the well-adjusted black adolescent, are rarely handled in empirical studies. In this document…

Adolescence may be conceptualized as a period of life that begins and ends with major developmental transitions: the transition from childhood to adolescence and the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. This study focused on the nature of change in early adolescence and the relationship of that change to adjustment or problem behavior 4…

Research has revealed relationships among a wide range of substance use behaviors, including smoking, alcohol use, and drug use. To investigate whether a substance use factor emerges when different indicators of substance use, different samples, and three health related issues, (i.e., meal regularity, exercise and hours of sleep) are examined, the…

Models of well being and human functioning have traditionally been based on empirical studies done with children and young adults. As part of an ongoing research program to develop and test a model of effective functioning and positive health in older adults, 31 elderly individuals (7 males, 24 females), with a mean age of 73.58 years, completed…

Interviews with 19 adults participating in adult basic education or literacy programs were conducted to ascertain the strategies they used to compensate for reading and writing difficulties. Although the project intended to secure this information from adults diagnosed as learning disabled, it had to rely on self-reports and educational history to…

This paper addresses issues regarding the hyperactive child, the impulsive child, and the low frustration tolerance child. It points out the subjectivity involved in identifying children as hyperactive, and outlines various forms of hyperactivity: the child who is in constant movement, the child who manages control in school but exhibits whirlwind…

Teachers have the paradoxical dual responsibility of fostering children's personal autonomy while ensuring that the children follow necessary rules affecting their health, safety, and educational development. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to determine when children should be allowed freedom and when they need regulation, and on occasion…

Self-schemas are knowledge-structures that organize information relevant to the "self." Research has demonstrated that persons who are schematic (versus aschematic) for a particular trait process self-relevant information on that dimension more efficiently. To determine whether individual self-schemas are organized into relatively…