While the rationalistic approach traditionally employed in research and development efforts in the social sciences may be the best method of inquiry to use in the physical sciences, social scientists, and, more particularly, vocational education researchers, would do better to adopt a naturalistic method of research. The naturalist approach to…

The answers of scholars and leaders in the fields of early education and child development to four broad interview questions concerning sociopolitical factors influencing early childhood care and education have been organized topically in the chapters of this book. In chapter 1, technical and ethical problems in early identification of actual and…

This article assimilates and critically reviews 10 reports between 1960 and 1980 in which hypnosis was used with non-retarded children, aged 6 to 17, who had learning problems. Studies are reviewed in terms of the major deficit focused on by the researchers, i.e., reading deficits, self-concept and academic achievement, academic behavior problems,…

This report explains why the Management Implications of Team Teaching (MITT) project chose multiple linear regression and path analysis to analyze through-time relationships among variables, and why it rejected repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and difference scores over time. Project MITT examined governance and work structures for…

In the first part of the paper, some realistic expectations about schools and curriculum development, the conditions which preclude applying the standards of basic research to evaluate a program of instruction in large school systems, and some new research paradigms which have emerged from practice are defined. In the second part, an effort is…

It has been argued that nonstandard dialects interfere with the attainment of literacy. The proposition that black vernacular English (BVE) has a measurably significant effect on reading achievement has never been demonstrated, although it is a widely held belief. What studies do reveal is an equivocal relationship between dialect and achievement…

Researchers working in foreign settings are often influenced by a number of factors which are quite different from factors which influence research activities in one's own culture. The hypothesis is that these cultural differences can influence research in a positive or negative way depending, at least partially, on the degree of sensitivity shown…

A research team approach was selected for an ethnographic project to identify those variables that influenced the adult beginning readers' acquisition of reading strategies and their effect on reading achievement. Weekly staff meetings focused on (1) identifying initial conceptualization and emerging foci reflected in the data, and (2) continually…

How various methodological decisions may influence studies of the effect of time-on-task on achievement are examined. Subjects were students in grades 2-5 in 18 classes taught by 12 teachers in a rural Maryland school district. All students were pre-tested in February 1978 in reading, language arts, math and social studies using the Comprehensive…

Preschool children's knowledge of adult caregiving behaviors was examined with a sample of 14 middle-class, Caucasian boys and girls between the ages of 24 and 27 months. Each child's caregiving behavior in a laboratory environment containing dolls, toy animals, and toy objects, while accompanied by his or her mother, was recorded independently by…

Regulations for the protection of human subjects have been introduced by the Federal government to try to mediate among the different special interest groups seeking or resisting regulations affecting the conduct of research. Educational researchers have been particularly resistant to regulations. The risks in conducting educational research are…

This report provides administrators, project leaders, and researchers with information about major federal regulations governing research in the social sciences. The report is presented in five major chapters. Chapter I identifies the report's limitations. For example, it describes only statutory and regulatory provisions and covers only domestic…

This paper discusses a longitudinal, exploratory study of developmental dimensions related to object permanence theory and explains how multidimensional scaling techniques can be used to identify developmental dimensions. Eighty infants, randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups and one of four counterbalanced orders of stimuli, were…

A number of organizational, personal and methodological characteristics have been identified through the literature which inhibit or can be used to facilitate the use of evaluation and testing information. Inhibitors of information usage include organizational characteristics such as loosely coupled and decentralized systems, personal…

The trend of student evaluation of college faculty performance is documented, and implications for humanization of the university are considered. Research in the area of teacher evaluation is cited, and it is proposed that reviews of the literature on student evaluations indicate by and large that student ratings are reliable and valid, even…