When 29 percent of final grades for students at Bendle Middle School showed up as Ds and Es, teachers knew something had to give. Kenkel, Hoelscher, and West describe how the ABCI approach, based on mastery learning, shook up a community culture of low expectations for working class kids, and opened the way for more appropriate teaching methods…

The 2008 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a joint conference with the Michigan World Language Association, focused on learning about the diverse backgrounds and needs of today's students and discovering new ways to help them succeed in reaching the goal of language proficiency. A wide variety of workshops and…

The relationship between instructional treatment manifested as mastery learning and non-mastery learning strategies and various measures of Spanish proficiency was studied with 41 freshmen at an all-female high school in the New Orleans (Louisiana) area. Subjects were grouped homogeneously into 2 classes of 22 and 19 students, representing the…

Many classical pianists want to develop jazz piano skills because they have acquired: (1) an awareness of the importance of jazz as an art form; (2) an attraction to the sophistication and complexity of jazz music; (3) an interest in exploring contemporary music styles; and (4) a desire to become involved with a type of music which is viewed as…

Focusing on thinking skills which are basic to citizenship, the paper reviews definitions of citizenship from Plato to the present, discusses scholarly thinking about citizenship, lists general principles of skill development, and presents two brief sample lessons. Citizenship is interpreted as social interaction which is based upon global…

To support a comprehensive look at the problem of increasing minority student achievement in the Montgomery County Schools (Maryland), this report reviews the literature to identify factors affecting minority achievement and to learn from 20 years of programs aimed at low achievers. Section I describes three types of intervention programs: (1)…

Eighth grade students, randomly assigned to three criterion performance levels, studied matrix algebra in three programed lessons. Student achievement, ability, time spent, and other measures were obtained; and minimal variance criterion performance levels, analogous to production isoquants, were attained. A Cobb-Douglas (log-linear) function was…

As part of an educational reform in the Netherlands, teachers were required to implement models of adaptive instruction, including group-based mastery learning. It was expected that mastery learning would raise achievement and reduce differences in achievement among children of different social classes and between girls and boys. In 1987, students…

The continuing theme of these conferences is: "Reading, the Process of Creating Meaning for Sensed Stimuli." The special theme of this 1983 anniversary conference is: "Reading Reading: 50th Anniversary Perspectives." The proceedings in this yearbook reflect the retrospective and prospective emphasis of the special theme.…

A study was conducted to determine whether conventional instruction and mastery-based auto-tutorial instruction interacted with learning characteristics that were found to be instruction-interactive in previous research. Conventional instruction consisted of lecture with discussion and laboratory periods. The mastery-based auto-tutorial…

This monograph discusses 12 teaching methods that have a sound theoretical basis, have demonstrated a positive impact on student learning, and have a substantial research base. In many situations, the methods can be combined in such a way that the potential for student learning is greater than if used independently. Since no method will work in…

This loose-leaf compendium includes three types of brief research summaries: "topical synthesis,""close-ups," and "snapshots." The single topical synthesis is entitled "School-Community Collaboration to Improve the Quality of Life for Urban Youth and Their Families" (Kathleen Cotton). Close-ups consist of…

This document contains materials from a workshop on Elements of Instruction Vocational, Technical, and Adult Education (VTAE). The model used in the workshop was based on the teaching model resulting from the work of Madeline Hunter. The workshop consisted of formal presentations, opportunity for participants to put the content into their own…

Schemes for assessing reading achievement with specific tests have been in use since early in this century. The two driving forces behind the testing movement--scientific objectivity and compulsory education--blossomed in the 1920s and 1930s and continued substantially unchanged through most of the 1960s. In the early 1970s, the idea of mastery…

Instructors face many choices, and their decisions and actions should be based on certain concepts. Believing that many instructors do not know enough about those concepts and the educational research and theories behind them, the authors brings together a synthesis of what is available in the realm of teaching and learning: theoretical and…