Two instruments were used to discover current faculty practices and attitudes about student writing at a college that was about to begin a college-wide writing program. The attitude survey included a number of items about writing as a college-wide enterprise, relating instruction in writing to the goals of a liberal arts education, and concerning…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent a set of teacher competencies thought to be generic were considered to be essential by all teachers regardless of their subject or level. A list of 52 competencies was compiled to be submitted to participants in a comprehensive survey of education professionals-- elementary and secondary…

Two teachers were subjects of this investigation into the effect of various forms of feedback on the frequency of a teacher's attending to desirable child behavior. The feedback took three forms: (1) a report of the frequency of the teacher's attending to appropriate pupil responses, (2) a report of the frequency of attended and unattended…

A rationale for using teacher performance as the best source for evaluating science teachers is developed. Examples of observational techniques which vary in specificity are analyzed in terms of their appropriateness for the amount of structure and/or the degree of realism. (MH)

For a competency-based system of teacher certification to be feasible and fair, a valid and reliable set of measurement procedures must exist. There are four questions which must be answered before competency-based teacher certification can be validly implemented. The first question is, Should teacher or pupil behavior be used as evidence of…

This model is designed to serve as a conceptual framework for alternative programs with primary emphasis on provisioning (the way in which time, space, material, equipment, and activities are used in the learning environment). The model's concern is to assess concrete examples or tendencies of teachers, students, and the education program. The…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a set of criteria within a format that teachers, student teachers, and supervisors can use to better understand what inquiry is and how to evaluate the extent to which it is being incorporated into classroom activities. The evaluative criteria are organized into an instrument and are divided into the…

This paper addresses some of the practical ways by which students can be given information about the adequacy of their responding. The author views this information as all that is frequently necessary to alter an inappropriate behavior. Thus, he considers feedback to be the first step in most behavior management programs. Studies to determine how…

This document reports on a series of studies carried out concerning nonverbal behavior in peer tutoring interactions. The first study examined the encoding (enactment) of nonverbal behavior in a tutoring situation. Results clearly indicated that the tutor's nonverbal behavior was affected by the performance of the tutee. The question of whether or…

This paper examines the nature of teachers' experiences in one teacher center by describing their physical and verbal behaviors. Teachers were observed for a total of 27.8 hours, and each activity observed was noted in one of several categories listed under physical or verbal behavior. While the data do not permit a direct assessment of the…

An evaluation procedure, Cognitive Congruence Procedure (CCP), is described which systematically looks at the cognitive dimension of instruction and provides information on: (1) Congruence of intent and practice, (2) Emphasis given to each kind of thinking operation, (3) The degree to which a program has been implemented, (4) Judging equivalence…

An 11 category modified Flanders' interaction analysis system was developed for analyzing the verbal behavior of graduate student recitation teachers in an introductory college geology course. Data were collected from six recitation teachers and 423 students. The teachers were trained in the use of the system and analyzed tapes of their own…

The Questioning Strategies Observation System (QSOS) is designed to record verbal behaviors occurring in the classroom which are associated with the teacher's use of questions. Twenty-four categories are used in three main sections: initiation of the question, response to the question, and reaction to the response. Under initiation, the categories…

The Classroom Behavior Task, a ten-minute classroom simulation developed to measure abilities of potential urban teachers, was tested by comparing performance in the Task with on-the-job performance, using the Classroom Behavior Observation Form and a rating scale divided into "strength and sensitivity" components. Subjects of the study…

A competency-based, field-centered systems approach to elementary school teacher education was designed to bring about specified, measurable outcomes, to have evidence of its effectiveness continually available, and to be adaptive in the light of that evidence. The model was separated into two interdependent parts, the instructional model and the…