The death of a parent can cause economic and emotional stress for the surviving family members. As part of a larger survey of widowed men and women, living in Melbourne, Australia, data on needs of children who had experienced a parent's death were collected from 126 widowed parents with at least one child under the age of 18. Parents reported…

Communication, particularly in the form of self-disclosure or emotional expressiveness is important to happy, healthy relationships. Differences in emotional expressiveness between sexes, between socioeconomic groups, and within each of these groups were examined in 48 males and 44 females from high and low socioeconomic (SES) groups. Subjects…

Two studies examined the relationship between teacher behavior and effective English teaching. The first study, in 1978, investigated whether a relationship exists between the intellectual disposition of English teachers and student response to literature using the Co (complexity) Scale of the Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI) to measure teacher…

Of particular interest to those exploring students' learning modalities is the relationship between the visual and auditory systems and reading recall. Among the findings of studies that have investigated this relationship are the following: (1) reading competency is dependent as much on auditory processing as on visual processing; (2) when visual…

Literary gaps were identified by Wolfgang Iser in 1974 as "vacant pages" that invite the reader to reflect and enter into the text thereby motivating students to experience the text as reality. Arthur Applebee, in 1979, identified three categories to distinguish children's types of interaction with stories: (1) the complexity of literary…

This paper reports findings from a naturalistic study of children's peer interactions in a kindergarten classroom. As the participant observation field-work of the study progressed, it became clear that much of children's interaction in their kindergarten classroom was covert in nature. That is, it took place in classroom contexts defined as…

Form level is a major element in the scoring and interpretation of Rorschach responses. Exner's 1974 text and 1976 comprehensive system workbook provided helpful norms and scoring conventions for determining form quality, but its 1985 revision appeared to lead to generally lower levels of form quality. To examine this clinical impression, the…

The proliferation of critics and critical approaches has produced a trend toward fragmentation and isolation among the practitioners involved. A suggestive counter-trend indicates that there is intense curiosity among critics to watch colleagues encounter texts, grapple with the preliminary questions of stance and method, and share the experience…

This paper analyzes responses by 20 high school history teachers to student questions about the beginning of the American Revolution. The teachers viewed a 15-minute videtape on the subject, responded to a series of scripted questions read by student actors, and later reflected in writing on their teaching performance. The teachers varied by…

Writing does more than demonstrate the interpretive process active in the mind of a student, it influences and directs the interpretive process in writing. Writing to read allows the expressive dimension to find an overt, secure place in the interpretive framework of a student's learning. By examining a student's theoretical explanation of her…

The similarities and differences in the responses student writers received from peer groups communicating face-to-face and by electronic mail were examined in this study. Subjects were 20 English/language arts teacher education students at the University of Virginia, who were divided into four groups with each group randomized to a treatment order…

The double-entry journal requires students to write affective response statements to literature readings and to compare such entries with those of classmates. Use of the double-entry journal is intended to activate students' prior learning and present feelings, foster collaborative learning, integrate major language skills, and encourage the…

Some research has shown that women's achievements in traditionally masculine fields are devalued. To determine if females would be judged more harshly than males for performing unethical behaviors in order to gain entry in competitive professions, and to examine gender differences in the evaluation of unethical conduct, college students (52 males…

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that variations in physical attractiveness elicit different evaluative and behavioral responses. To assess differences in affective responses to variations in physical attractiveness and the affect of sex on those responses, 76 college students (31 male and 45 female) viewed colored slides of an…

This study compared the item difficulty and item discrimination of three multiple choice item formats. The multiple choice formats studied were: a complex alternative (none of the above) as the correct answer; a complex alternative as a foil, and the one-correct answer format. One hundred four graduate students were randomly assigned to complete…