Teaching experience at The Lab School of Washington has shown that learning-disabled children and adults cope with their lack of self-esteem and feelings of stupidity by developing masks to hide their hurt. These include masks of super-competence, helplessness, invisibility, clowning, injustice collecting, indifference, boredom, outrageousness,…

This paper addresses policy issues raised by recent recommendations to improve the quality of teacher education by moving to fifth-year certification. It describes career patterns of beginning teachers with different undergraduate preparation paths, and analyzes the effects of new teachers' background characteristics, educational investments, and…

Outlines model of experiential learning process based on personal construct theory. Suggests that, through sensitivity training, participants' construct systems become modified, either by defining constructs to understand self and others, or by incorporating new themes into the construct system to provide broader understanding of interpersonal…

Reviews five composition textbooks, assessing their attempts to integrate the reading and writing processes through literature and composition. Examines the textbooks' theoretical instantiation and notes their lack of success in achieving the reading/writing connection. (MM)

Presents criterion-related validity data for the Child Behavior Checklist-Teacher's Report Form. Interprets results from elementary school boys (N=172) as supporting the criterion-related validity of the teacher-judgment measure and its use as a screening or diagnostic device in the school. (Author/ABB)

Proposes a "critical mass" explanation for the diffusion of interactive media, such as telephone, electronic mail, or computer conferencing, within communities. Considers two special characteristics of interactive media: (1) that widespread usage creates universal access, and (2) that use entails interdependence, in which earlier users…

Comments upon the role of teachers in breaking down students' resistance to learning, and suggests that teachers become, not all-knowing givers of knowledge in the classroom, but persons who help students become interpreters themselves by separating themselves from their own interpretations. (JC)

An author recommends that young children read good fiction rather than stories in basal readers. Recounts her dismay when one of her books was adapted for a basal reader and the language was changed and simplified. (NKA)

Forty Israeli teachers of normal and hearing-impaired students (grades 3 and 6) ranked relative linguistic complexity for several versions of the same story and from them selected reading texts for their classes. Ranking tasks were performed similarly, but teachers of hearing-impaired students chose a far more limited range of texts. (Author/VW)

Explores responses to fiction reading by students who record these responses in journals. (NKA)

Examines teachers' knowledge and understanding of classrooms in terms of interpretation of nonverbal and situational clues. Two sets of videotapes of classroom episodes, one in Hebrew and one in Dutch, were viewed by both Dutch and Israeli teachers in cross-cultural settings. Analysis of responses yielded insights into the two cultures.…

Results of two experiments revealed a significant correlation between function-word predictability and reader enjoyment and a strong correlation between content-word unpredictability and reader enjoyment. (FL)

By allowing students to enter imperfectly into peer group conversations with their own language and conversational habits and then monitoring their feedback while modeling the type that is most conducive to promoting true exchange, teachers can facilitate successful and satisfying ways of talking about writing. (HOD)

Reactions of preschool children from urban and rural Quebec to several animated and other representational television characters were obtained. Visual elements consistently appealing are identified, and responses are reviewed for sex, cultural, and location differences. Application of results in the production of a televised antismoking promotion…

Provides a case study analysis of two high school teachers' responses to a particular set of writing tasks and suggests an analytical tool that may be used to explore teachers' responses to change. (HOD)