Cooperative learning aims to enhance students' on-task interactive behaviors in the classroom. Observation in Israeli elementary schools has indicated that interactive behavior of students in their learning sequence holds potential for quality cooperation and help among children, but that teachers lack the skills to structure learning tasks that…

Six severely mentally retarded students (ages 9-16) were paired with six nonhandicapped fourth- and fifth-graders (Group 1) who received training to act as tutors during outdoor recess. Six of their nonhandicapped friends (Group 2) received no training. Group 3 consisted of all other fourth- and fifth-graders who were also present during the…

The differential treatment of boys and girls interacting with teachers in day care settings was investigated in this study. Participants were 14 male and 14 female teachers and their 268 students (134 boys and 134 girls) in licensed day care centers located in an urban setting. The oldest toddler class of 2- through 3-year-olds, and a preschool…

The Stanford Research International (SRI) classroom observation system provides a description of the classroom environment with emphasis on interactions between teachers and students and among students. Included in the SRI observation system is the Five Minute Observation (FMO), which records classroom interactions into "frames"…

A study sought to determine the stability of student/teacher interactional gymnasium behavior over one academic year. The design of the study was a single-subject, time-series analysis. The subject was a male elementary school physical education teacher with 14 years of experience. Data were collected using the Cheffers Adaptation of Flanders…

Analysis of students' interpretations of a complex episode of social interaction was used to illustrate three features of human plans that distinguish them from robot plans and that form a basis for a theory of the development of social action. The features illustrated are that (1) human plans are social, (2) human plans operate on…

This paper describes data gathering and analytic procedures, and then presents examples regarding how each fits into the naturalistic research model. From the interactionist perspective, called symbolic interactionism, meaning is of central importance. Naturalistic inquiry is a way of doing social science research which provides the methodological…

This paper briefly reviews studies pertaining to the imitation of facial gestures in early infancy. It is suggested that imitation provides for the initiation of a reciprocal exchange between mother and infant, but does not sustain such an interaction, since this requires a continually varied and changing pattern of gestures. Thus there is an…

This investigation assessed the importance of orientation behavior on group consensus and the individual satisfaction of participants. Students in four sections of an introductory speech course rated each classmate on a seven-point scale according to orientation behavior as manifested in the ability to resolve conflict, reinforce agreement,…

Sociolinguists have recently demonstrated the value of directives in indicating the relationship between status and linguistic form. The purpose of the instrument developed for this study was to quantify the coerciveness of directives on the basis of the theoretical approaches in the literature to objectify the comparison of directive forms.…

Observers viewed silent videotapes of elementary school children listening to a lesson. Some of the stimulus children were listening to either a very easy or a very difficult lesson; consequently, their nonverbal behavior occurred naturally and spontaneously. Other stimulus children were instructed to pretend (role play) that they understood or…

The relationship between subject of instruction and the classroom behavior of teachers and pupils was assessed in this study. The study was conducted over a two-year period of observation of elementary grade classes. Two variables were investigated: individual pupil participation and teacher verbal behavior. Only two subjects, reading and…

This study investigated (1) the amount of time mothers spend with preschoolers in specific activities related to cognitive development and the level of intensity of contact shared between mother and child during these activities; (2) sociodemographic variables which influence mothers' time spent with children; and (3) relations between mothers'…

In this paper, it is suggested that reading instruction can be improved by studying the interactions of students and teachers in beginning reading classes. Such research could identify effective environments for learning to read, providing teachers with alternative and effective ways of adapting reading instruction to the students' needs. The…

Two experiments investigating the efficiency of communication between 5th grade children from differing socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds are described. In each experiment, 40 same-sex pairs, half male and half female, were formed into dyadic groupings by combining lower- and middle-SES children into the four possible speaker-listener combinations.…