An ethnographic study of instructional processes in a college class resulted in identification of the instructor's roles and various teaching methods. Positive classroom dynamics were found to be related to the instructor's willingness to help students comprehend difficult lessons. (JN)

Analyzes a study which examined the effects of teacher vagueness on comprehension of high school biology students (N=48) regarding the vascular system of angiosperms. Includes the finding that teacher vagueness terms significantly affect student achievement and student perception of lesson effectiveness. (CS)

Reports on research that confounds normal expectations concerning the teacher behavior that encourages student achievement and self-concept development. For instance, using praise or rewards and pausing, eliciting, and responding to student questions were negatively correlated to student achievement gains. (IRT)

Focuses on the relationships of the teacher's affective attributes, concerning both interest and attitude, and measures of teaching behaviors of elementary grade preservice teachers (N=148) consistent with instructional methodology of the SCIS curriculum. Results include a confirmation that a field-oriented treatment yields significant changes in…

Student teachers given five weeks of microteaching, observation training, or no preparation, taught mathematics to male high school students in urban, suburban, or rural Nigeria. Those teachers who had microteaching experience demonstrated greater frequency of target teaching skills, while a combination of variables contributed to student…

Instructional methods are operational exchanges between participants within environments that attempt to produce a learning outcome. The classroom teacher's ability to produce a learning outcome is the measure of instructional competence within that learning method. (JN)

A study shows that teacher organization of classroom work, positive reinforcement of student response, and time spent in discussion, praising student behavior, and waiting for answers influence student evaluation of teacher effectiveness. (MSE)

Presents a checklist that principals can use during classroom observation that provides objective information that can be discussed with teachers later. (MKM)

Elementary and secondary school teachers were trained to generate effective instructional systems which provided for a greater number of individual students. There was a significant decrease in both the number of students exhibiting inattention and in the mean amount of inattention displayed by students of experimental teachers. (Author/GDC)

In a small secondary school in rural Georgia, this study sought to identify sample classrooms perceived by students and teachers as varying substantially in environmental robustness and to observe these classrooms to describe and contrast their structural features. Identified characteristics of high- and low-robustness classrooms are listed and…

The purpose of this study was: (1) to examine how artistic development is fostered in the playgroup setting; (2) to discover if between-playgroup effects are apparent in the developmental levels of children's painting, and (3) if such differences occur, to consider the relevance of supervisor behavior to these differences. Subjects were 48…

Teachers trained with the revised Utah State University Self-Concept Protocol Program showed significant increases on six of twelve program-related behaviors. Although no gains in self-concept were made by handicapped children, there was evidence for differential effectiveness of the program for learning disabled and emotionally handicapped…

When 64 college students were randomly assigned to one of four self-concept treatment conditions and given a paired-associate learning task, the mean task performances for the raised self-concept, therapeutically lowered self-concept, and control groups were equal to one another but superior to the performance of the counter-therapeutically…

Generalizability theory was used to study the occurrence and generalizability of classroom interaction measures. Results indicated infrequent occurrence and lack of generalizability of many behaviors of the Brophy-Good Teacher-Child Dyadic Interaction System. (JKS)

Because of the focus on student teacher achievement, a product evaluation of instruction (as opposed to a process evaluation) is appropriate for use in performance-based physical education teacher education internship programs. (LH)