This study investigates the vocabulary development of preschool children in the five programs of the Mt. Druitt Early Childhood Project, New South Wales, Australia. A Vocabulary Assessment Task was designed to tap the customary style of reference used by preschool children in response to familiar objects, and to test the qualitative levels of the…

Noting that in Europe there is a growing criticism of the largely American communication research tradition that focuses on individuals, this paper examines European-style "critical analysis," which looks at social systems. The paper first examines the criticism of American-style "administrative" research, and then discusses…

The problems with using Piagetian theory to explore language-thought relationships are two-fold. First there are methodological problems, including the lack of experimental controls and the lack of uniform criteria by which cognitive operations are identified. A second difficulty is the questionable practice of interpreting child language…

The paper reviews the state of the art in evaluation research of direct instruction projects with handicapped students. The first section delineates research designs used (including norm referenced comparisons, nonequivalent comparison groups, and quasi experimental designs); major findings; and problems with each. A distinction is made between…

Research into teacher evaluation techniques has not provided conclusive answers due to a number of research problems, including the subjectivity of traditional teacher observation techniques and the lack of sensitivity of newer, more objective techniques. A five-year research project in California, the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES),…

This brief paper presents a sequential walk through a simple research setting--a two group experiment--to indicate common but avoidable design difficulties that may jeopardize the usefulness of the data obtained. The six flaws examined are the failure to select subjects from the population to which generalizations are to be made; failure to use…

Children's ability to understand the implied messages in indirect speech was investigated using a role play elicitation task. Subjects were asked to complete story endings using puppets for several scenerios involving a mother and her four children. In each of the stories the mother gives an indirect directive which is supposed to get the children…

The uses and restrictions of commonality analysis are described. Commonality analysis has been increasingly used as a method to examine the relative importance of independent variables, through the partitioning of variance among the variables of the regression equation into unique and common components. The effects of all other independent…

This report analyses justifications gathered in a series of studies which led intellectually normal infants' school and nursery school children and mildly mentally retarded special day school children to acquire conservation understanding. Two hundred and five children were given a pretest of number, mass, length, liquid, and weight conservation.…

Problems for the biographical researcher in conducting oral interviews with primary sources are discussed. Successful biographical research using oral history must be thorough and honest. A major problem in getting candid information from primary subjects may occur if quotations touch upon areas considered personal or controversial. Other problems…

Although listening skills are the most utilized of the language arts skills, they are the least analyzed by research. Causes for this neglect include the fact that listening research has not adequately confronted the basic question of the nature of listening and has utilized correlational studies with ready-made definitions and formats, the…

Delegates to the Canadian planning meeting of the International Year of the Child showed most interest in attending workshops on the topic of children in the international context (rather than in a single country context) and least interest in the topic of research. These choices may reflect a realization that (1) if we are to understand our own…

When an interview is used as a research technique, the process of the dialogue between the experimenter and the subject is a part of the experimental conditions. The dialogue can be extensively structured, or it can be open-ended. Though the latter situation may provide more information about the subject's thought processes, there is a greater…

PROGRAMMATIC RESEARCH IS DISCUSSED AS ONE OF THE BASIC NEEDS OF READING RESEARCH. OTHER NEEDS ARE--(1) FOR BASIC RESEARCH THAT FOCUSES ON THE READING PROCESS, (2) FOR LEADERSHIP THAT VALUES SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY AND INTELLECTUAL HONESTY, AND (3) TO INFORM AND CONVINCE THE PUBLIC OF THE POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF READING RESEARCH. PROGRAMMATIC…

TO DETERMINE THE TYPES OF RESEARCH PROBLEMS CONSIDERED IMPORTANT IN WASHINGTON COMMUNITY COLLEGES, A QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY WAS CONDUCTED AMONG THE FULL-TIME PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBERS. THE RESEARCHERS IDENTIFIED 38 PROBLEM AREAS, ALL OF WHICH WERE REPORTED TO BE OF AT LEAST MODERATE IMPORTANCE. RESULTS WERE TABULATED IN FOUR CATEGORIES--(1)…