This report presents first year (1984-85) findings of The Writing Project, a 2-year school-based study of the use of word processing to improve learning disabled children's writing skills. Based in three Massachusetts school districts, the project focused in the first year on intensive observation of 14 fourth grade children as they wrote with…

This study investigated the cognitive styles, attributions, and self-evaluations of 40 gifted girls and 40 gifted boys, grades 6 through 8. Informational attributional ratings for task difficulty, luck, ability, and effort were studied in the context of: (1) an individual non-competitive goal structure; (2) a competitive goal structure; (3)…

The three reports in this collection are based on research reviews and original research from both published and unpublished sources, covering the years 1986 through 1990, and they reflect the broad array of factors that determine the effectiveness of technology-based instruction. The first report discusses research studying the effects of…

This paper focuses primarily on the more prominent teacher characteristics research published in the latter half of the 1980s. Literature on the characteristics of elementary, secondary, and college-level teachers is reviewed. Demographic data suggest that today's public school teachers are older and more experienced, and have more years of…

A study compared the test scores of National Fire Academy (NFA) students who received on-campus classroom instruction and students who received the same instruction delivered by satellite teleconference. Following a review of literature that indicated no significant difference in test scores between on-campus classroom students and teleconference…

Based on the notion that reading is both fun and fundamental, this book contains a stimulating array of activities that parents can use to engage their children in reading from the toddler stage through primary school. The first section provides information on how to use the guide, and some tips for encouraging young readers. The second and major…

This narrative recommends a communication design for educators to use during a variety of interactions. The strategy consists of nine components: (1) greeting/introduction (the speaker's introductory remarks should establish physical comfort, a pleasant feeling, and a professional tone); (2) anticipatory set (establishing a mind set for content to…

This master's thesis is intended to show that the computer, as an aesthetic medium, will create the social conditions whereby the population will be able to develop the aesthetic bridge of self-actualization, and that the increased numbers of people involved with their own personal psychological development and growth will create social conditions…

Intended for teachers of gifted students in grades 4-12, the curriculum uses six of Shakespeare's comedies ("The Taming of the Shrew,""The Tempest,""Twelfth Night,""The Comedy of Errors,""As You Like It," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream") as materials for nurturing intellectual and…

Ninety students in a Hong Kong course in English as a second language were asked to list 20 topics they considered to be of interest for classroom study. The most popular topic areas, in descending order of popularity, were education, the students' home country (Hong Kong), family life, money, human relationships, marriage, nationalism and…

While much has been done in the application of communicative principles to second language instruction, their application to language testing has been less fruitful. Experience with language testing projects in England and other countries suggests that communicative language test design should be based on the following issues and considerations:…

Designed for elementary school teachers, this publication treats various aspects of publishing young student-authors' writing. Activities are as follows: (1) proofreading (children should proofread first by themselves); (2) pagination (let children decide how to break up the text); (3) placement of text (on alternate pages, for example, or perhaps…

A motivational approach to student learning that has been implemented in several courses at Wright University in Ohio consists of six efforts: (1) to instill in students the knowledge of motivation, both from within and without; (2) to make students members of cohesive work groups; (3) to apply theory learned; (4) to demonstrate achievement of…

The paper develops a method for learning improvement which incorporates the learner in the development of the learning/instructional strategy. To this end, a rate limiting model using topographical brain mapping as an educational intervention is presented. It is suggested that such intervention programs focus on those factors which are…

Using Japanese with Japanese students of English as a second language is not only unnecessary, but could hinder the learning of English. Students must be motivated to use a language in order to learn it well, and the classroom in which the native language is spoken will not foster English language learning any more than Japanese spoken in daily…