The University of Michigan's English Professional Semester (Pro Sem) is an upper level interdisciplinary program that explores student-centered approaches to the teaching of writing and literature. An advanced essay writing course, a senior literature seminar, an English methods class, and an observation practicum in local schools are integrated…

This study was conducted to investigate pupil responses to lessons taught by preservice teachers, and it addresses teachers' concept mapping as related to interactive behavior or effectiveness in the classroom. Lessons taught by student teachers (N=10) were examined for what pupils thought were the lesson's key ideas and for two things pupils…

The base-year survey of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) took place in spring 1988. Data on a variety of topics were obtained by questionnaires and achievement tests administered to a national probability sample of 25,000 eighth-graders. This report presents results of an examination of the quality of responses of…

The concept of technology transfer (the application of knowledge) and E. M. Rogers and D. K. Bhowmik's (1970) heterophily-homophily distinction is used to help better understand and offer ways to deal with the negative reactions of undergraduates toward foreign teaching assistants (TAs) in U.S. universities. While it is important for foreign TAs…

A chronic problem in public relations education is the fragmentation of coursework, particularly as this fragmentation impacts on the application of communication theory. Public relations textbooks presentation of theory is often fragmented and segregated in to "theoretical" chapters and "applied" chapters with little integration between the two.…

A study analyzed in detail one 37-minute classroom literature discussion to better understand how to foster students' critical reasoning. It investigated the characteristics of classroom interactions that support students in the process of responding to literature, the roles of the participants, and how the teacher can structure the tasks and use…

The University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) has two half-courses which can be categorized as early exploratory field experiences and which have existed over 5 years. One half-course is mainly theoretical in its focus and consists primarily of an analysis and description of education in contemporary society. In contrast, the other half-course…

A study examined student initiated and teacher initiated influence patterns that make up aspects of bidirectionality. The study also identified ways in which these patterns relate to student learning and attitudes. Study subjects included 21 fifth-grade students and their teacher. Thirty-six social studies lessons, representing a unit, were…

Three topics are discussed: (1) the meaning of feminist research; (2) what can be learned about research practices from feminist efforts to create empowering research designs; and (3) how postmodernism presents challenges to feminist empirical work. Feminist research puts the social construction of gender at the center of one's inquiry in order to…

Changes in the teacher's authority structure as well as changes in the content of student talk during peer response sessions occur over the course of a school year in a first-grade classroom. In the beginning of the year, the teacher, a beginner in the Teachers College Writing Project, dominated the talk during share sessions, while the students'…

This study determined the effects of two data collection techniques on response rate, response bias, response validity and respondent evaluation. Administration of a computer survey was compared to a machine readable paper survey. Cover letters were sent to 249 college sophomores who were randomly selected and proportionally stratified by intended…

To determine what students expected their speech teachers to be like, students in introductory speech courses at two universities were asked to complete a questionnaire on the first day of class, prior to meeting their instructor. The students were told their instructor was male or female, but otherwise were given no information about the teacher.…

In fall 1984, the first group of potential Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) graduates took the College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) as a requirement for obtaining an associate degree or being admitted to the upper division at a state university. Of the 997 first-time test takers, three quarters passed the test. A study was conducted to…

An extended abstract is provided for a major article titled "The Effects of Frequent Curriculum-Based Measurement and Evaluation on Pedagogy, Student Achievement, and Student Awareness of Learning" is described. The article summarizes research on the educational effects of data-based program modification (DBPM). Thirty-nine special…

Research is reported on the cognitive mediational paradigm which postulates that teachers influence students' learning by causing them to think and behave in particular ways during teaching. Four studies are reported. The first describes five teachers and their students and explores, in classroom lessons, the cognitive processes students used in…