Successful intervention for students with reading difficulties should integrate social/emotional variables with skills-based approaches, keeping in mind that these students are reluctant to take reading risks, appear immobilized when asked to read, flee from challenging reading tasks, engage in disruptive behavior, and refuse to complete reading…

The use of reconstructive elaborations for teaching content to secondary students with learning disabilities is described. The technique provides a framework for adapting all content-area information into more familiar, more concrete interactive elaborations. Its use with United States history in a recent study illustrates the strategy.…

The relative effectiveness of three procedures for increasing vocal response to prompt in 15 preschool children with Down Syndrome was compared. Light-dimming and visual screening, when combined with positive reinforcement, were both found to be significantly more effective than positive reinforcement alone. (Author/JDD)

The advantages and disadvantages of the use of the oral interview and role-playing to assess communicative competence are outlined. The interview is criticized and deemed an inappropriate form of testing, and it is proposed that role-playing allows better assessment of sociolinguistic competence. Group interaction is suggested as providing another…

With collaborative learning, the professor no longer acts like an expert dispensing knowledge to passive students. The professor becomes "a guide, rather than an authority figure." Undergraduates are used as teaching assistants, peer tutors, and members of research teams. (MLW)

Discusses the practice of parental involvement in the teaching of reading. Questions whether the way this involvement is currently evaluated is as productive as it could be. Suggests alternative kinds of evaluation which might better serve a formative function in helping teachers plan their actions. (KO)

This paper develops a multiplicative model as a means of combining ratings of criticality and frequency of various activities involved in job analyses. The model incorporates adjustments to ensure that effective weights of criticality and frequency are appropriate. An example of the model's use is presented. (TJH)

Asserts that the sudden insights that characterize intuitive thinking are as important in effectuating learning as analytical thinking. Claims that intuitive thinking enables students to comprehend complex relationships better, to put things into better perspective, to generate new ideas, and to perceive more ways to integrate facts, concepts, and…

Tests the inferential approach to the study of competence evaluation and a series of complicating factors relevant to it by having participants with known implicit theories judge an observed communicator on a set of competence-relevant characteristics and on overall competence. Finds inferential models predicted these judgments well. (MS)

Suggests that English teachers use sports metaphors as a different way to communicate with their students about writing. (MS)

Describes a college teaching experience in which active visual analysis (hands-on deconstruction of visual statements to their constituent elements and principles) had an unblocking effect on concomitant writing assignments. Suggests that students can improve both verbal and visual articulateness when modes of perceiving and thinking are used…

The primary objective of a public cash management policy should include safety, liquidity, yield, and legality. Contains a cash management policy/procedure checklist, a test for cash managers, and a formula for calculating the rate of return. (MLF)

The article describes a social skills training group for 10 British autistic children (ages 9-16 years) which aimed to integrate them into the regular classroom. The weekly sessions were held over 4 years and followed guidelines of G. Mesibov and S. Spence. (Author/DB)

The study found that use of the Dial-A-Phone instructional package plus a least intrusive prompt teaching strategy was more effective than the prompts alone in training two adults with moderate developmental disabilities to match digits of personal phone numbers with digits on a dial telephone. (Author/DB)

Clear and comprehensive criteria for developing and evaluating gifted programs are needed. These criteria would define selection of program students and program characteristics. Programs should involve all potentially able students and should be innovative, intellectually stimulating, comprehensive, enthusiastic, and divergent. (MSE)