A content analysis was conducted of think-aloud protocols of a teacher who used the Mathematics Assessment Questionnaire (MAQ) to explore the mathematical dispositions of her students. The teacher used the MAQ four times over a 2-year period with geometry students at various levels. On the first occasion, the teacher used a direct instruction…

Four preschool children with developmental delays were taught to name the numerical value of sets of geometric figures, the corresponding numeral, the corresponding number word, and the corresponding Roman numeral. Half of the stimuli were taught with instructive feedback and the other half without, as two conditions were established: the future…

Since 1989, Channel One has broadcast a 10-minute newscast with two minutes of commercials. In exchange for receiving the Channel One broadcast, schools promise that 90% of the students will watch Channel One for 92% of the time; that each program must be watched in its entirety; that a show cannot be interrupted; and that teachers cannot turn the…

Student-faculty contact is widely accepted as influencing retention within campus-based programs. The difficulties of implementing such contact within a distance learning environment magnify its importance as a topic for investigation. This study sought to evaluate the effect of faculty initiated contacts on student persistence within a large…

This paper describes the rationale and purpose of a library assignment (suitable for 100- and 200-level communication courses) designed to expose students to concepts about communication research. The assignment encourages students to explore the library, enhances their understanding of the research process and scholarly journals, helps them…

In fall 1990, a study was conducted to assess the attitudes of nursing students who were attending Riverside Community College (RCC), in California, toward exposure to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome/Human Immunodeficiency Virus (AIDS/HIV) positive patients in a hospital setting. All students enrolled in RCC's associate degree nursing program…

A college writing instructor used lesbian and gay fiction in three of his classes--two freshman composition classes and a science fiction class. His university accepted the instructor's right to use these materials and acknowledged students' rights to opt out of the classes after they learned the requirements of the class. The instructor viewed…

A study described student evaluations of an assignment in a course in family communication that required writing and performing (in small groups) a personal family narrative. Of the 43 students sent questionnaires asking for their reactions to the assignment, 40 returned completed questionnaires. Content analysis of the responses to the assignment…

As a male professing feminism to his female elementary education students, an education professor faced problems, philosophically and pragmatically, as he and his students contested feminist theory and pedagogies in class. During the summer of 1986, 62 of his students conducted oral histories of retired or veteran teachers of literacy in the…

This report describes the second phase of a study of the transformations students make in their written texts as they write from sources in a given discipline. Phase 1 of the study examined how students performed the task of writing a critique of a scholarly article in sociology and how their efforts were evaluated by professors in the discipline.…

This paper examines children's responses to black and white illustrations in particular silhouettes. The study had two components; the first examined fifth graders' reactions to picture books using silhouette illustrations. The second part of the research analyzed students' responses when a dramatic context was used to view and respond to selected…

Within the Mathematics of Finance classes at the Smeal College of Business Administration at Penn State University, lectures are developed using Asymetric's Toolbook program and are presented through a computer system. This approach was implemented because it has the potential to convey effectively concepts that are ordinarily difficult to…

To examine how the school environment shapes the composing process, a series of interviews were conducted over 16 months with a sample of students from an academically oriented high school. After an initial background interview, each student met biweekly with one member of the research staff and discussed the writing he or she had done since the…

Changes in teacher behavior in response to different types of feedback were examined. Subjects were faculty members from a two-year college. Five types of feedback were selected: (1) videotapes made during one class period; (2) the Bellack system, which provides the teacher with an observer-made graph of frequencies of teacher and student…

The authors of this essay regularly require students to engage in informal writing as a means to promote learning. One form of informal writing is the summary/reaction journal. In summary/reaction journals, students read a chapter or article, write a summary of that reading, and then react by offering their own insights and responses to the…