Intended to provide an overview of current thinking on response-oriented literature instruction and meant to stimulate dialogue leading to reform, this book reports research findings and ideas from teacher conferences of the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature at the State University of New York at Albany. The book contains the…

Classroom teachers use intuitions, experiences, syllabi, and course guides to help implement a curriculum. Psychometric techniques can also help guide and shape curricula. Some psychometric techniques allow tests to reveal the actual curriculum mastered by students in an objective and sample-free manner and to indicate a probable learning sequence…

In this paper, algorithms are described for obtaining the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters in log-linear models. Modified versions of the iterative proportional fitting and Newton-Raphson algorithms are described that work on the minimal sufficient statistics rather than on the usual counts in the full contingency table. This is…

Findings of a study that investigated the effect of administrative stressors on administrators' coping responses and the consequences of those responses are presented in this paper. Based on the managerial stress cycle model (Gmelch 1982), the study uses the transactional perspective, which views stress as an individual's physiological or…

This paper briefly reviews the state of the art in reader response research with special reference to the Danish studies in reader responses. The paper then proceeds to a discussion of a number of methodological problems inherent in setting up questions for cross-cultural (and international) studies in general, and for reader response studies in…

This paper reports on a study to develop a scale of stress measurement and its use with undergraduate students (N=269) at a large land grant mid-Atlantic university. Students, within the classroom setting, were given a questionnaire containing 52 potentially stressful hypothetical situations and were asked to indicate the degree of stress they…

This study explored the effects of a combination of student and feedback characteristics on the postfeedback performance of Southwest Missouri State University undergraduate students in a classroom-like situation. The subjects were 26 male and 43 female students enrolled in 3 large sections of Introductory Psychology with all sections taught by…

This activity book provides a direct, hands-on educational tool to help children ages 7-11 process their feelings, thoughts, and experiences as they relate to violence. The workbook is designed to: (1) foster a dialogue between child and adult as well as among children in group settings, while acknowledging the child's desire for privacy; (2) help…

This paper introduces a modification to the Rule Space diagnostic classification procedure to allow for processing of response vectors that contain missing data. Rule Space is an approach to diagnostic classification that involves characterizing examinees' performances in terms of an underlying cognitive model of generalized problem-solving…

An exploratory study used stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from two alternative school students who choreographed a dance to depict their understanding of the relationship between the two central characters in a short story. Their account indicates that in composing their text they: (1) initiated their interpretation by…

A companion to "The Reading Environment," this book is concerned with getting groups of children to talk openly and confidently about their readings of particular books. Using a generous selection of transcripts of classroom discussions, the book shows how children can be encouraged to share their enthusiasms and difficulties and the…

Rasch between and total weighted and unweighted fit statistics were compared using varying test lengths and sample sizes. Two test lengths (20 and 50 items) and three sample sizes (150, 500, and 1,000 were crossed. Each of the six combinations were replicated 100 times. In addition, power comparisons were made. Results indicated that there were no…

A study underscored the potential of whole language philosophy as a framework for secondary English teachers and students as they move away from strictly traditional methods. Research methods included case study, grounded theory, and qualitative inquiry. Participants included 2 veteran teachers who taught in a predominantly white, suburban high…

This paper reconsiders the nature of literature as a school subject. Musing on three anomalies that occur when language arts teachers consider their professions about school literature and what occurs in literature classrooms: (1) the anomaly of the text and the textbook; (2) the anomaly of the idolatry of naive readers whose heads have been…

In the years since the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Senate Confirmation hearings, it is apparent that this event has had some far-reaching consequences. Although the immediate outcome of the Senate hearings was not positive for Professor Hill, the effect of her testimony seems to have been to encourage more discussion of sexual harassment. The…