The paper describes a computer-based project designed to help college instructors teach introductory sociology. The project combines a variety of orientations to expose students to basic sociological concepts, classic theories, and the breadth of the discipline. Two traditional methods of teaching sociology include relying on different instructors…

The relationship between the encoder and the decoder in the communication of nonverbal behavior provides the basis for the two studies described in this report. The first study investigated the ability of parents to decode the nonverbal behavior of their own and other children. Parents were asked to identify children's mode of encoding (natural or…

The verbal interaction of 31 middle class early adolescent boys and their parents was analyzed in order to provide information concerning adolescent autonomy. The boys were independently and reliably classified on the basis of age, physical maturity, and intellectual level. The taped interactions were coded for interruptions, talking times,…

Part of a PhD dissertation submitted to Michigan State University.

The unprecedented development of self-help groups confirms their importance, but few studies have focused on prevention and self-help groups. Two methods for investigating preventive potential are outcome studies and process analysis. To assess the presence of helping processes in self-help group meetings, a process analysis was developed to…

A study was carried on for 2 years in a predominantly Italian-American suburb near Boston. During the period of data-collection, the researchers observed both classroom interaction in a kindergarten/first grade and the interactions of two members of that class at home with their families. The analysis is an attempt to discover what factors in…

The Sims Image-Based Organizational Model (SIBOM) with reference to its use in evaluation of bilingual education programs is described. The technique elicits participant perceptions in metaphor-generating sessions. This is one step in a process whereby participants' perceptions can be organized to describe the system of problems and resources they…

The notion of symmetrical communication and its application in course teams at Deakin University, Australia, are considered. Symmetry in communications is evident in groups characterized by mutual recognition by members of one another as persons accepted and appreciated in their common striving for mutual understanding and consensus. The technique…

A Minicourse on Flanders' Interaction Analysis was adapted and re-developed for use in West German teacher training institutions, and evaluated in several studies with pre- and inservice teachers. The Minicourse incorporates the microteaching components of discrimination training, laboratory teaching experience, and feedback. The results of four…

Underlying the current use of ethnography in the study of teaching and learning is the assumption of an analogy between the school or classroom and culture. The claim of educational ethnography is that it discovers and describes the ways that members of the school community create and share meaning. Ethnographers aim to discover the operating…

The study, involving 15 emotionally (EH), hearing (HH), or physically (PH) handicapped children in segregated preschool special education classrooms, 15 mainstreamed EH, HH, or PH preschoolers, and 15 nonhandicapped preschool peers, analyzed interactions of both handicapped and nonhandicapped children, ecological information on each classroom…

This study examined the conversation patterns of 26 Hawaiian kindergarten children in order to determine whether children with a Hawaiian Creole (HC) preference or a Standard English (SE) preference speak to each other. The normal interactions of the children (14 boys and 12 girls) were monitored during the learning center sessions of the…

The question of whether publishers' news preferences affect the performances of editors and reporters is examined in this paper. The first section reviews studies of ways the newsroom environment has affected reporters' role assumptions; it then notes that previous studies have generally been monadic (focusing on only one person) and have provided…

This study examines age and sex differences in nurturant behaviors displayed toward a male infant by 60 subjects, both male and female, from three age groups: preschoolers, preadolescents, and young adults. The infant was 12 months old at the onset of the study and 16 months when the testing was completed. Each subject was videotaped for seven…

A study was conducted to identify the capacities of young children to demonstrate differential communicative responsiveness to normal children (same age and older) and to older, retarded children of an equal mental age in the context of a collaborative problem solving task. Eleven normally developing children (aged six to eight years) were the…