In this study, the effects of a school improvement program on cooperative learning (CL) with respect to the elaborations of 6th grade students working in mixed ability and mixed sex dyads on 2 cooperative tasks were examined. A post test only design with a control group was used to investigate the provision and receipt of elaborations within the…

Background: Psycho-educational programs are among the most commonly applied suicide prevention approaches for young people. This study examined the effectiveness of these programs in a controlled study by assessing the effect on knowledge, attitudes, coping and hopelessness. Method: Fourteen- to 18-year-old students were administered structured…

Test accommodations are often given to students with disabilities as one means of removing construct-irrelevant barriers to proper measurement of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, the practice is controversial. This article reviews numerous studies that focused on the effects of accommodations on test performance. Consistent…

Many academics do not view community engagement as a priority in their work. Yet, in an increasingly competitive funding environment, there is evidence that many benefits arise from the creation of university-community partnerships. This paper describes a study that documents the experience of seven academics successfully establishing community…

In a federally funded early literacy project, various instructional activities were embedded into an array of classroom contexts to provide supplemental literacy instruction and to contrast children's engagement and participation in different contexts and participant structures. The study was conducted with English- and Spanish-speaking children…

Successful music education programs pay special attention to the national standard components and are generally able to service at-risk students with music classes that, when consistently attended, serve as venues for building self-esteem and social skills as well as improving behavior. However, not all at-risk students receive music instruction.…

The impact of the educational programs of zoos on the recreational visitor is addressed in this report. Unobtrusive or nonreactive research methods were employed as primary evaluative techniques by graduate social science students conducting six research projects at the Los Angeles Zoo. These studies were designed and implemented to examine: (1)…

A persistent problem in aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) research has been the need for a better conceptualization of instructional treatments. The concerns are important in the analysis of instructional treatments: the importance of considering the psychological processes called upon by the instructional treatment, and the ecological validity…

A system of staff and patient-staff meetings was initiated to clarify the psychodynamics of ward interactions and to reduce conflicts. Observations were made on the program's effect on the therapeutic milieu. It was concluded that the program failed because the adolescent patients felt threatened by over-analysis. (SJL)

Article attempts to orient the reader to the behavioral approach and an overall perspective of the main elements that must be evaluated in preparation for formulation of a treatment program. (Author/RK)

Early evidence from an evaluation of the Child and Family Resource Program (a Head Start demonstration) suggests that this program influences parent-child interaction in ways that promote children's social and cognitive development. (Author)

Discusses integration of the government publications reference collection into the central reference collection at the University of Arizona library. Topics include the integration process, training methods, the training program effectiveness survey, perceptions of competence in reference provision, and an assessment of government documents…

Evaluation of the interactive intervention model with mothers and young children (n=32) with developmental delays found that treatment mothers became more responsive and less directive and provided clearer linguistic models. Treatment children increased their use of vocal turns but did not make significantly greater improvement in overall…

This study of 14 children (ages 3-5) with disabilities participating in the Classwide Social Skills Program found that the program increased subjects' positive play and levels of teacher reinforcement, but these increases did not generalize to 3-month or 6-month follow-up periods nor to another play session in the day. (Author/JDD)

Background: Delays and deficits in joint attention and symbolic play constitute two important developmental problems in young children with autism. These areas of deficit have been well studied in autism but have rarely been the focus of treatment efforts (see Kasari, Freeman, & Paparella, 2001). In this study, we examine the efficacy of targeted…