Despite the recent interest in studying American education and remedying its problems, school libraries and media centers have been neglected in analyses of educational assessment and as instruments for educational improvement. Although statistics have been gathered on the number of books owned, information is also needed about the collection's…

Because of recent shifts in understanding the nature of knowledge and the process of learning, there may be major and long-lasting changes in the nature of educational research and its role for educators. Since most people understand through the use of metaphor, a metaphor that previously fostered the understanding of research is the assembly line…

Issues that are central to science when the object of inquiry is the human being need clarification and analysis. These issues can be formulated as a question, such as, "How can researchers in adult and continuing education conduct research that is empirical human science; that is, how can they study human beings as persons with values, will,…

The "symbol systems approach" to the study of computers in education that is outlined avoids the pitfalls of past media research--particularly research on the effects of television on children's learning and knowledge--and asserts that media can be usefully distinguished in terms of the symbol systems they present and the kinds of…

An examination was made of Federal program statistics on vocational education during the past 10 years by the Bureau of Occupational and Adult Education of the U. S. Office of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics of the U. S. Department of Education. The study found that despite a mandate for reform, the National Center's…

Research on reading teacher effectiveness has taken several different directions over the past 30 years: during the 1950s and most of the 1960s, research focused primarily on teacher qualities; in the early 1970s attention shifted to the effect of the teaching process on student learning, while in the late 1970s and early 1980s experiments defined…

A study was made of cross-cultural patterns of achievement motivation in relationship to the mathematics achievement of Japanese and American boys and girls approximately 16 years of age. Sample sizes were 9,582 for the United States subjects (specifically, from Illinois) and 1,700 for the participants from Japan. Data came from performance on the…

A comparative analysis was made in the Netherlands of three projects aimed at answering the following research questions: (1) what are the backgrounds and characteristics of the methods for the construction of qualification profiles (a description of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for job performance) for the curriculum and training…

A study of Arizona vocational education follow-up systems was designed to survey problems in and promising practices for developing information systems to provide useful data for decision making. Interviews with state, county, college, and school district personnel revealed that the major problem faced by those conducting follow-up studies at both…

Of a group of 67 low-income first-time fathers-to-be, half were randomly assigned during the second trimester of pregnancy to participate in an intervention program designed to acquaint them with information, insights, and clinically appropriate techniques of responsive care for infants. Fathers were videotaped in feeding interactions with infants…

Generalizability theory, which subsumes classical measurement theory as a special case, provides a general model for estimating the reliability of observational rating data by estimating the variance components of the measurement design. Research data from the "Heart Smart" health intervention program were analyzed as a heuristic tool.…

Two innovative methods for collecting and analyzing qualitative data are vignettes and pre-structured cases. Vignettes are descriptions of situations or problems written by a professional, with a suggested outline and comments provided by a researcher. Advantages of this method are strength of impact of the written descriptions and efficiency of…

Research on instruction in the architecture studio is discussed drawing from current work in the psychology of teaching. Consideration is given to what instruction entails and the mental activities that occur when one is instructing. Difficulties in studying instruction are also addressed, and examples of research on instruction are based on…

This examination of the research on computer-based instruction for the major academic subjects in the elementary and secondary grades considers three varieties of empirical data--surveys of computer-using teachers, school district program evaluations, and experimental field studies. A discussion of the findings of two national surveys of…

Policy considerations that affect immigrant ethnic minorities in the Netherlands are addressed by the articles in this volume. The articles cover the following topics: (1) the recent history of migration and general outline of government policy toward immigrant groups; (2) housing and the concentration or dispersal of ethnic group populations; (3)…