This study examined the objectivity, trainability, and reliability of the SRI observational system (developed at the Stanford Research Institute) as it was modified for use in the "A Study of Schooling" research project. Four instruments in the observation system were tested. The physical environment inventory recorded the architectural…

The nature of classroom activities, cognitive learning opportunities, and instruction in seventh and eighth grades within the academic subject areas was examined. The purpose was to describe and interpret classroom learning opportunities in terms compatible with the complexity of typical classroom events and teachers' understanding of those…

A study was conducted to describe the experiences of five preservice teachers who taught in a special practicum without cooperating teachers. Prior to the practicum, the student teachers were interviewed to ascertain their views on teaching reading and what they hoped to gain from the practicum to further prepare them to teach it. Each student was…

Miami University's (Ohio) two-course educational psychology sequence for prospective teachers has been redesigned to incorporate early field experiences. Concerns about the congruence of field tasks with course content, as well as about limiting situational constraints, were addressed by a committee on teacher preparation. Currently, each semester…

Teachers' perspectives on the student assessment process and on the role of testing in that process are presented. Primarily ethnographic in approach, this study includes investigations of teachers' ideas and thought processes as well as observation of actual classroom practice. Six elementary teachers participated in a three-stage process of…

Characteristics that seem to separate effective and ineffective teacher evaluation systems provide a framework for viewing existing evaluation systems and determining necessary changes. Nine commonalities represent the best practices: (1) participants share an attitude that the purpose of an evaluation system is to provide assistance in the…

The study examined social behaviors of 19 gifted and 19 nongifted preschool children. A social behavioral inventory was developed from repeated observations of interactions collected during an 8 week pilot study. Four general categories of behavior were observed and analyzed: verbal positive (greeting, conversation, compliment, concern, laughing,…

Little is known about how teachers encourage memory activity and strategy use in children. In order to gain such information, 69 teachers of grades K through 6 were observed in five 30-minute periods. A total of 292 strategy suggestions and 15 instances in which the teacher attempted to suppress spontaneous strategy use were observed. Teachers…

Observations of children's responses to picture books in three first-to-fourth-grade classrooms over a two-year period helped to form a descriptive framework for children's responses to picture books. Field notes, transcripts, and other data revealed that when children talked about picture books, they used the lexicon of the expert. They seemed…

This module (part of a series of 24 modules) is on teachers' use of systematic observation records of social behavior to aid in assessing students' special needs and in evaluating the effects of specific programs. The genesis of these materials is in the 10 "clusters of capabilities," outlined in the paper, "A Common Body of…

A study was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of R. Moss's "Classroom Analysis of Teachers' Theoretical Orientation to Reading" in order to provide an observation system specifically intended for assessing a teacher's reading instruction as a function of theoretical orientation. Five reading experts were chosen to…

The verbal behavior of the teachers of two London Primary School open classrooms was characterized. Four categories of verbal behavior were found and 19 percent of all teacher utterances could be classified as potentially reinforcing to students. (SDH)

A survey of campus laboratory school activity in the last few years reveals a change in roles from one primarily directed at training student teachers to one emphasizing the four functions of research, observation, demonstration, and participation. Present emphasis on field-based preservice and inservice teacher education indicates an increasing…

This report describes variables that differentiate the classrooms of more effective and less effective teachers. Teacher effectiveness is defined as the ability of second- and fifth-grade teachers to teach specially constructed reading and mathematics curriculum units over two weeks. Twenty more effective and twenty less effective teachers were…

Prompting of reading errors is a common pattern of teaching behavior occurring in reading groups. Teachers' tactics in responding to pupil errors during oral reading in public school classrooms were analyzed with the assistance of the technology of the Computer Assisted Teacher Training System (CATTS) to formulate hypotheses about teacher decision…