One of the most frequently touted benefits of higher education is the opportunity to interact with people different from oneself, yet these interactions do not automatically lead to positive outcomes. The purpose of this study is to explore how one particular context for diversity interactions, service-based alternative break programs, may provide…

One of the fastest growing sub-groups of students of color at today's colleges and universities is the bi-racial/multiracial population. How one identifies themselves and is identified by others can impact biracial students' college experience and the groups to which biracial students interact. Some biracial students come to college from families…

The author presents a case-study in which the group process Program Planning Model, a problem solving approach developed at Wisconsin School of Business, was used to help resolve the hostility between a small rural community and a college with a varied student body. (Editor/LF)

The amount and type of peer interaction occurring in four racially mixed eighth grade classrooms were studied. Observational data were collected on the peer-directed behaviors of 69 white children and 32 black children weekly during one semester. The race and sex of the person to whom each behavior was directed were recorded as were the affective…

Seventy-seven fourth- and fifth-grade students were placed in either a cooperative or a competititve learning structure and the teacher either supported or did not support their decision-making competence. As hypothesized, students whose teacher supported them indicated that they were more confident and committed to making a classroom decision…

The goal of this panel was to develop the means to improve the reliability, validity, and utility of analyses of human interaction in learning settings. Research on interaction itself, as well as its association with the variables of student learning, student characteristics, setting characteristics, and teacher education were all concerns of this…

Problems in the analysis of sequential behavior are discussed in relation to observation-coding procedures. A set of heuristic constructs are presented toward the development of a solution strategy for the analysis of chains of interactive behaviors. A proposed analytic computer program is briefly outlined and discussed. (Author)

The 11 chapters comprising this work focus on the interactional influences that may be related to differential classroom experiences for males and females. The effects of contextual factors, teacher characteristics, and student characteristics are investigated. Addressed primarily to researchers, this information should prove useful to teachers,…