This theme issue covers "High School Programming" and approaches to meeting the needs of gifted high school students in Texas. The first article is "Thematic Interdisciplinary Curricula for Secondary Gifted Students in English and Social Studies" (Joel E. McIntosh and April W. Meacham). This approach is contrasted with the…

This paper argues that the use of unrestricted natural language (UNL) interaction is essential in computer-assisted instruction aimed at teaching clinical decision making, and in interactive tests that emulate oral examinations. Knowledge about the scope and limitations of computerized UNL interaction gained during the development of the authoring…

The scientific and technical publications summarized in this report describe research on intelligent instructional systems sponsored by the Personnel and Training Research Programs, Psychological Sciences Division, of the Office of Naval Research. Abstracts of the following papers are presented: (1) "Understanding Reflective Problem…

This paper provides an understanding of the conceptual and operational relationships between evaluation, content analysis, and microcomputers so that evaluation practitioners can better address applied content analysis problems used in their work. The first section presents a general model for conducting an evaluation effort that focuses on…

Part of a research project designed to develop a theory of the cognitive processes involved in skilled reading by the analysis of the location and duration of eye fixations, this paper concentrates on how eye fixations can be used to determine when encoding, lexical access, parsing, and integration processes are executed and how they are affected…

MICROPIK is a multiple-alternatives, criterion-referenced model for evaluating CAI (computer-assisted instruction) software and microcomputer hardware against selected curricular objectives. The model provides decision-modeling control over diverse interactive patterns that occur when computer hardware, courseware, and instructional objectives are…

Decreasing fiscal budgets and declining student enrollments have forced many school districts to evaluate the alternative strategies in closing certain elementary or secondary schools, either temporarily or permanently, for purposes of consolidation. For rural and other small districts, the strategy of multiple district consolidation (merger) has…

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) simulation employed three techniques: case study, role playing, and model building, in order to acquaint college students studying money and banking with the creation of monetary policy. The specific goals of the FOMC simulation were: (1) to familiarize students with the data used in monetary policy…

Divided into eight sections, this training manual describes the philosophy, activities, and materials employed by a workshop designed to help childbirth educators reduce sex-role stereotyping in their classes. The first section explains the relationships of sex-role stereotyping to childbirth education, defines the problem of stereotyping, and…

Fifty-five recent studies of individual differences (IDs) in elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) are reviewed. Twenty-five data sets are examined, analyzed, or reanalyzed by factor analysis. The following promising dimensions are identified: basic perceptual processes, reaction and movement times, mental comparison and recognition tasks, retrieval…

Data are used from the individualized math component of an operating educational system to validate the basic assumptions underlying EDSIM 1, a computer simulation model that traces the interaction of three probabilistic elements in an educational program and produces synthetic output regarding this interaction in terms of student time in the…

A management education planning approach called Computer-Assisted Subject Area (CASA) has been conceptualized as a framework for viewing, evaluating, and recording efforts to improve the effectiveness of a subject area to be integrated within an overall curriculum. CASA is a generalized set of models which feature a hierarchy of activities in…

This yearbook consists of two distinct parts. In part one, Concepts and Techniques in Geography, eight academic geographers review the thrust of recent research in the branches of the discipline with little or no reference made to the implications of these developments to elementary and secondary education. Two essays deal with man/land…

The purpose of this study was to gather, through historical examination of Santa Clara County and its educational institutions, "base-line data" for the development of useful models for educational planning. This paper describes the growth and development of schools in the county and presents a list of factors that have contributed to…

This paper presents SPACE, a space planning and cost estimating simulation model designed to allow analysis of alternative class scheduling patterns and their consequent resource demands. Several illustrative examples of the model's use are given, with documentation of the validation procedures using data from the University of California. The…