Study supported by U.S. Office of Education contract OE-6-10-309 under the provisions of the Cooperative Research Program.

The purpose of a study was to identify factors impacting on supportive behavior exhibited by pre-service home economics education teachers that relate to student-teacher interaction. Four types of positive affective actions were examined: verbal, physical contact, facial, and physical proximity. A pretest/posttest design used videotaped…

A study designed to examine the differences in quality ratings that 20 teachers in each of three senior high school curricular areas (business, English/social studies, and mathematics/science) gave to samples of written argument by college freshmen also investigated the relationship between the three groups of quality ratings and eight syntactic…

A study was conducted to examine the impact of classroom arrangement (open versus traditional) and tidiness (messy versus neat) on observers' expectations about a teacher. A heterogeneous sample of college students was shown color slides of vacant elementary classrooms varying in terms of these two dimensions and asked to indicate their…

Observation of two third-grade teachers during the opening days of school revealed different approaches to organizing their classes and instructing pupils on correct classroom behavior. The results of observation are given in narrative form and analyzed. Five principles that characterized the most effective teacher are presented: (1) The teacher…

Two major reasons for this research are given: to examine the influence that training in Glasser's techniques of Reality Therapy and Class Meetings has on teacher and student behaviors; and, to investigate the relationship between teacher affective behaviors and student behaviors, i. e., on-task behaviors, absences, and disciplinary referrals.…

This study analyzed children's comprehension of teacher directives at three levels of clarity. A total of 64 subjects, ages 5 1/2, 7 1/2, 9 1/2 and 11 1/2, participated. Photographic slides of teacher-pupil directive interactions paired with tape recorded teacher directives were presented to subjects under one of four levels of verbal context:…

Two competing paradigms seem to characterize all models of teaching behavior. The first may be labeled as behavior-analytic, detail specific, and structured in that the learner proceeds through prescribed steps toward each goal. The other may be described as inquiry-oriented and learner-centered in that the learner has greater choice of the means…

Data were obtained from 311 teachers in order to sample a wide domain of attitudes toward writing instruction and writing anxiety. The subjects' responses were organized along four attitudinal dimensions: (1) the importance of standard English in writing instruction (SE), (2) the importance of defining and evaluating writing tasks (DE), (3) the…

The acquisition of new teaching behaviors requires a personal commitment based on freely choosing to attend to, practice, and finally integrate newly acquired behaviors into an already established teaching philosophy. Significant attitude or behavior change can be accomplished through a five step development process that focuses on awareness,…

This report contains an analysis of the mechanisms that connect teaching processes to student achievement and the circumstances contributing to the establishment of treatment conditions in classrooms. The first section is focused on the way in which academic tasks operating in a classroom influence the quality of student learning. The second…

Classroom behavior of student teachers who had training in discussion techniques and in interaction analysis was observed and compared to the behavior of their cooperating teachers. A significant difference in types of communication patterns in the classroom of student teachers who had this special training and those who had not was observed. It…

The theory that teachers treat students from whom they expect superior achievement differently than those from whom they expect inferior performance is examined. Five ways of reacting on the part of the teacher are identified for the purpose of this study--teacher warmth, teacher feedback, teacher selection of materials, opportunity offered for…

The author argues here that progress toward greater validity in description through increasingly specifiable standards for quality control is crucial for the advancement of theory as well as for the improvement of method in descriptive studies of classroom life. Some standards for judging the validity of descriptions of classroom action are…