The teacher program described here focuses on why social studies should be part of the secondary school curriculum and attempts to delineate effective methods for teaching social studies. Specific topics in this program are thinking and social studies, multiple viewpoints as evidence, historiography as a teaching devise, developing an analytical…

This report describes the joint efforts of the Evaluation of Teaching program of the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education and the Office of Research and Evaluation of the Austin Independent School District to develop a competency based teacher evaluation system. The task assigned was to produce a system that reduced the vagueness…

With the theory that social and personal values influence the conduct of evaluation studies in education, the author discusses the impact of two major sources of such values--contextual factors, including political, social and organizational influences; and the terminology, models, and personal values of evaluators. Alternative purposes for an…

The use of photography as an evaluation and research tool is discussed, with an emphasis on an evaluative study of the ESSENCE environmental science curriculum project. The camera was used in site-visits in an attempt to portray the workings of the project and to convey a meaningful understanding of the curriculum as it was actually used in the…

The Verbal Measure of Information Rate (VMIR) is a measure of information rate which reflects the elements, features, and changes in a complex environment. Subjects rated 14 bipolar adjective pairs to indicate an appropriate description of the learning situation or information load (simple-complex, novel-familiar). The measure was administered to…

The guiding principles by which the Albion (New York) school district developed its written composition curriculum guide include two basic assumptions about the learning/teaching of composition skills and eight other assumptions that reflect salient features of the composing process. The fundamental assumptions are that writing can be taught and…

Using tape cassettes in evaluating student writing takes less time to cover more comments than does writing comments. It also allows for more personal contact with students and permits a teacher to indicate more adequately how errors can be corrected. One helpful technique is for the teacher to leave the tape recorder on while trying to provide a…

Creative dramatics or child-oriented dramatic play is a basic educative process that draws upon the learning strategies developed in children's play and relates them to classroom learning tasks. As a structured play process that encourages children to explore the world in ways familiar to them, creative dramatics relates new experiences to old…

The study was designed to increase 88 teacher trainees' generation of inferring and problem solving questions and elicitation of appropriate responses from educationally handicapped students. Teacher trainees participated in one of five groups: (1) anticipating videotapes, (2) coding videotapes, (3) anticipating written version, (4) coding written…

Teachers should note that revision is an integral part of the writing process and that writers use revision in various ways. In some cases, revision means rewriting--beginning at the end to discover the real focus of the paper and how to organize it for the greatest effect. In other cases, revision may mean simply polishing by deleting, adding,…

The article reviews the cognitive behavioral approaches to the training of intelligence in the mentally retarded. A proposed structure of intelligent behavior is presented that serves as the basis for classifying the intended foci of the various training programs. Selected training programs are reviewed in terms of this classification. The…

This issue of "TESL Reporter" presents a summary of U.S.O.E. Project HE-084 by Gerald Dykstra; a sample listening comprehension exercise; a linear diagram of the English noun phrase designed for English as a Second Language students, developed by Alice C. Pack; an article on Japanese groups in summer session; and an article by Betty Crethar on…

A teacher's experiences in acquiring realia (mostly food-related) for her junior high school French classes are described. The collection of realistic props proved to be both a small adventure in itself and the source of a rewarding change in classroom instruction. The use of a simulated store, in which students bought and sold the imitation food,…

This set of flash cards is designed to accompany the Defense Language Institute's instructional programs in Cantonese Chinese. Each card displays six Chinese characters, for a total of 1500 characters. Each character is printed two inches tall. Above each character are transcriptions of the Chinese words represented by the character (marked for…

Using the ERIC/ONTAP file, student searchers may improve their online skills by employing an 8-step search strategy technique. ERIC/ONTAP, now available through LRS/DIALOG, uses a subset of the ERIC file with built-in answer sets and a special evaluation command. The training procedure guides the student from the initial search interview to the…