Surveys children's access to media sources and assesses their diversity of content. Finds that children have access to numerous old and new media, since most live in households that receive cable television and own VCRs. Suggests broadcasting and videocassettes offer little diversity in children's content, while cable enhances programing choices.…

Examines whether the special features of VCRs lead to transformations in families, or whether preexisting family relationships and media orientations determine the uses of VCRs. Finds that VCRs mainly augment and extend family television patterns, and suggests that VCR use is both a cause and a symptom of family conflicts. (KEH)

Describes the widening gulf between high school and college practices of teaching literature, with high school students trained in reader response entering college courses based on analysis (traditional or nontraditional) of texts and requiring skills they do not possess. (SR)

Investigates the effects of reader perspective and cognitive style on encoding, storage, and retrieval processes. Finds that structural characteristics of the text itself may affect storage and retrieval processes but not encoding processes, and that reader perspective shows no effect on a delayed recognition test. (RS)

Presents a case study of a conversational storytelling in which a recipient redirects an ongoing storytelling. Finds that storytelling may be a way of accomplishing interpersonal activities, both for teller and recipients, and that the recipient can be an active participant in the storytelling. (MS)

Examined are the kinds of questions teachers asked and the kinds of revisions 22 deaf high-school seniors made in the process of revising drafts of narratives. Asking students to provide more information and to rephrase specific language resulted in revised drafts which were rated better than their first drafts. (Author/JDD)

A survey of 100 regular classroom teachers found that teacher participation in the mainstreaming process, rather than availability of specific classroom modifications, was an important factor in their accepting elementary-age handicapped students into their classrooms. Of the modifications surveyed, most desired were reduced class size, support…

Program staffs working with emotionally disturbed students must be aware of their negative collective reactions to students with whom they experience little progress. This collective process can occur even though individual staff-student interactions avoid conflict cycles. To fight these negative reactions, verbalization of frustrations and…

The tradition of medicine is that physicians do not abandon the sick, whoever they are and whatever they have done. Support must be provided to the individual physician, ensuring that everyone in the profession is informed about AIDS and makes necessary adjustments of behavior and commitment. (Author/MLW)

Responds to "new scholarship on women" perspective presented in previous article by Greiner, supporting the perspective and arguing for some redefinition. Asserts that new perspective will require training and retraining for new research methodologies and education for a new set of attitudes. (NB)

Discusses the effectiveness of teacher comments on student compositions. Asserts that establishing a written dialogue between teacher and student, including reactions to the student's composition and the student's reactions to teacher's comments, helps students develop their ideas further and provides more experience in expressing those ideas in…

Study found differential effects for five types of teacher directions (verbal instruction, nonverbal instruction, verbal instruction with physical assistance, nonverbal instruction with physical assistance, and physical assistance) with 24 severely behaviorally disordered students, aged 9-16. Nonverbal commands resulted in the most appropriate…

Reports a survey of British secondary school teachers to determine the types and frequency of troublesome classroom behaviors. Finding that "talking out of turn" and "hindering other children" were the most problematic behaviors, the authors examined variables such as the sex of the teacher, age group taught, and subject…

Results of a study with four autistic students (ages five-nine) showed that a picture training procedure was effective in teaching a generalized response to questions for which the relevant cue was visible, whereas specific generalization programing was required for situations in which the relevant cue was not visible. (Author/DB)

Reports on three experiments that do the following: 1) investigate the motivational and reinforcing structure underlying male sex role action in a three-person (a female and two males) exchange; and 2) contribute new information on females' interpersonal evaluation of males expressing masculine sex typed and androgynous sex role orientation. (MW)