This fact sheet examines age differences in children's reactions to parental divorce, in-school reactions, and the school role in helping these children cope. The school counselor's role is examined in working with school administrators, teachers, parents, and children. Individual and group counseling with children are discussed. Ten suggestions…

Following a major policy statement on writing in the primary school, this document employs a threefold approach to examining the teaching difficulties involved in responding to children's writing. The first section considers expectations that teachers have of children as writers, children's intended meanings, and various kinds of responses to…

A study investigated the effects of writing in a personal and a formal mode on students' understanding of literary text. Formal text-based and personal reader-based writing samples produced by 65 tenth grade students in response to two stories from D. Sohn's "Ten Modern American Short Stories" were analyzed for quality of response,…

Because certain teacher behaviors which maximize student engagement in learning have been found to increase student achievement, the sources of those behaviors provide an important focus for research on teaching. The finding that teachers treat children of different gender, race/ethnicity, or ability in ways that may have deleterious consequences…

It is important to estimate the number of examinees who reached a test item, because item difficulty is defined by the number who answered correctly divided by the number who reached the item. A new method is presented and compared to the previously used definition of three categories of response to an item: (1) answered; (2) omitted--a…

This paper outlines, from the perspective of three school principals, the complexities involved in implementing a curriculum innovation, "4MAT," begun in Ontario in 1984. Curriculum project considerations include: leadership skills necessary; importance of support systems for principals; role of research; role of the principal; project…

There appears to be a problem in the way students in introductory, nonmajor literature courses read poetry that affects the way they write about it. One widely accepted belief among students is that there is a hidden but identifiable meaning in the poem that they are supposed to discover. The problem with this strategy is that most students lack…

A plan was developed to improve followup study response rates by refining techniques for data collection and improving student motivation to respond to daily requests. Factors affecting response rate to followup surveys were investigated, and alternative approaches were recommended. Findings indicated that current procedures--two mailouts of…

A study investigated whether the reading preferences of emotionally disturbed boys were the same as the interests of boys in the general population. Subjects, 25 boys from a private residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed boys, were interviewed individually, completed a reading interest survey, and selected titles of books they…

Throughout its history, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has addressed the question: How can literature be fully revealed to students at all educational levels? In answering this question, NCTE has (1) clarified the rationale and objectives for teaching literature, with a view to reconciling concepts of literature as both an…

A study was undertaken to investigate the effects of directed response training to focus attention and to assess the impact of pictorial integrated stimuli on incidental learning. A total of 140 second- and fifth-grade children were administered a two-choice discrimination learning task consisting of three parts: original learning, overtraining,…

Importance of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land and the reported failure of the United States youth to have been genuinely educated about the Constitution raises questions regarding teaching. One concerns what teachers know about the Constitution and the other is what they believe about teaching. This study investigates these…

It has been theorized that the need for interpersonal contact is continuous throughout life and is necessary for one's well-being. The concept of self-disclosure, the process of making the self known to other persons, has been associated with varying levels of well-being. The content and comprehensiveness of self-disclosure by the elderly to an…

This paper presents a history of Danish studies in reader response research, including the addition of questionnaires to the research. The paper describes nine studies in reader response research, including information on their stages, persons responsible, supporters, funding institutions, internal reports, and publications. Five additional…

In order to identify causes of spousal abuse, current research efforts have attempted to reconstruct the communicative components of physically aggressive encounters within the family. An interactionist model of intrafamily violence, proposed by D. A. Infante, suggests that the interaction of personal, situational, and societal conditions may lead…