As experienced by vocational teachers in five California comprehensive high schools, the peripheral nature of vocational education results from two dimensions of school context. First, the purposes and priorities of these comprehensive high schools tend to be ordered in ways that concentrate symbolic acclaim and material resources on academic…

Six student teachers who were committed to the tenets of whole language were studied to determine how they manifested their whole language perspectives in light of the enabling and constraining factors they faced in their specific field sites. Results indicated that the six student teachers were forced to alter their teaching behaviors…

The findings of numerous empirically based research studies reflecting the views of teachers, students, and administrators can be used to identify a "core of techniques" associated with effective community college teachers. Community college teaching is generally more student-centered than four-year college instruction, with the choice of teaching…

A discussion of classroom communication looks at the function of questions, particularly teacher-initiated pedagogical questions but also other classroom questions, either teacher- or student-initiated. Two fourth grade science lessons, conducted in Brazil by different teachers, are analyzed. Analysis focuses on the relative effects of the…

Producing a high level of student involvement in the foreign language classroom depends on four common elements under the teacher's control: (1) teacher expectations and their modeling in class; (2) classroom atmosphere; (3) instructional formats; and (4) teaching activities. Students are more consistently involved in using the target language in…

Two combined second and third grade classrooms were observed throughout the five weeks of a summer school program to determine what "reading instruction" was in the contextual reality of classroom life. Observers viewed approximately 20 hours of reading instruction per week. In addition, they interviewed the classroom teachers informally as the…

Abstractor's analyses of 15 science education research studies are presented in three sections. The nine analyses in the first section focus on studies dealing with preservice and inservice teacher education. Areas investigated in these studies include: effectiveness of some inservice practices; teachers' perceptions of the importance of some…

This paper is concerned with the different ways that gender is represented in the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom, and how this representation may contribute to the socialization of female language learners. Attention is focused primarily on the language teacher's understanding and awareness of gender representations, not to specific…

A conceptual framework for the study of teachers' sense of efficacy was used to determine the extent to which teachers believed they could influence student learning. The framework was based on an extensive review of research literature on teaching, an ethnographic comparison of 2 organizationally different middle schools, and a process-product…

This document reports on the Teacher Efficacy Study, an investigation of teachers' sense of efficacy and the extent to which teachers believe that they can have a positive effect on student learning and achievement. Chapters discuss: (1) overview of the Teacher Efficacy Study; (2) the conceptual framework used for the investigation; (3) the…

Research and practice have shown that staff development is the key to the successful implementation of any effective schools project. Staff development is defined as the ongoing, job-related, research-based activity provided for employees to maintain and improve their competencies. Part 1 of this paper outlines components (such as district-level…

The Child Development Program Evaluation Scale (CDPES) is actually two scales in one, a licensing scale and a quality scale. Licensing predictor items have been found to predict overall compliance of child day care centers with state regulations in four states. Quality scale items have been found to predict the overall quality of child day care…

Provided are suggestions and recommendations for each item on the checklist, contained in Part A of the handbook, which was designed to help elementary school principals assess and improve science programs in their schools. Suggestions/recommendations, designed to make the checklist more meaningful and useful, are keyed by number and/or letter to…

This study examined teachers' content knowledge about the nature of science and how this knowledge was expressed in their classrooms. Understandings about science influence not only explicit lessons about the nature of science, but also shape an implicit curriculum concerning scientific knowledge. Consideration was also given to ways in which…

The paper describes how certain questionnaire items concerning teacher-claimed behavior might define a teacher's effort to maintain order in the classroom. Subjects consisted of 255 secondary school teachers teaching in examination classes (Forms 3 and 5) at 15 schools in the District of Kuala Terengganu (Malaysia). The teachers responded to a…