The Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), a system that combines the strengths of basic learning, individual instruction, and personalized relationships, all at low cost, is an attractive alternative for the basic speech communication course. It involves mastery learning, self-pacing, stress on the written word, instructor assistants, and the…

This document consists of assorted supplementary materials for a conference session on the topic of "Improving Education in America through Staff Development and Learning Technology." It contains (1) a preface; (2) a list of assumptions central to West Virginia's educational reform model; (3) a statement of the session's basic purpose,…

Competency based education (CBE) programs can increase pupil motivation, provide the opportunity to individualized instruction, and enable the school to communicate better to the pupil and the public what pupils are learning in school, according to the author. But he lists eight traps that lie hidden in the CBE movement, including further…

The components that one midwest community college uses in its remedial English composition program reflect applications of behavioral theory and include an explicit course goal; twelve small, sequential, cumulative instructional steps; explicitly stated behavioral objectives (based on Bloom's taxonomy in the cognitive domain); three forms of…

Project CIVTEC was conducted through the Columbia, South Carolina State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and has developed an individualized instructional approach, based on mastery learning, for eleven core curriculum courses in Civil Engineering Technology. The basic format for…

To explore the relationship between time and school learning, this paper defines the three kinds of learning time identified by researchers--allocated time, time-on-task, and academic learning time--and relates them to curriculum development. The author cites evidence that time-on-task is related to student achievement and describes two…

This report synthesizes findings emerging from research on mastery learning. Thirty-three documents were retrieved and analyzed for the report. The documents were concerned with mastery learning research at various levels, from elementary through postsecondary education. Specific subject areas which were the partial or total focus of the reports…

This report examines the Chicago Mastery Learning Reading Program (CMLRP) and other schoolwide approaches at selected schools in Los Angeles (California), New York City, and Chicago (Illinois) to identify factors in augmented achievement gains. This extended summary and conclusion seeks to provide information which can improve the general…

After introductory material outlining some of the major challenges facing community colleges today, this paper examines the efforts undertaken by Chabot College, California, to meet the demands of the problems posed by "new students" and fiscal constraints. Described first are Chabot's two mastery learning centers, at which students…

The proceedings of the First Mastery Learning Conference begins with Rocco Caponigri's introduction and Oscar E. Shabat's discussion of the importance of mastery learning to community colleges as they attempt to educate large numbers of underprepared students. Next, Benjamin S. Bloom examines the shifting emphasis in education research from…

The degree of influence instructor tutoring had on the performance of Black Hawk College sociology students was studied along with the question of whether students expressed a change in the degree of preference for the mastery approach when an instructor was actively involved in the learning process. Two classes were used: one during spring 1976…

Six goals are essential to basic skills mastery. Goal one is the identification of specific competencies and performance indicators which are necessary for students to master to become a coping adult. The appendix lists 17 competencies modeled after the Adult Performance Level Project (APL). Competencies are organized into five knowledge areas:…

Social studies teachers face pressures from demands for greater emphasis in the areas of multicultural aspects of the world population, expansive technological changes, citizenship and moral education, and accountability for basic competence. The latter demand offers an opportunity to return to the broad perspective of teaching students not "what…

This review of the literature on individualized instruction entered in the ERIC system between November 1978 and October 1979 covers the development and sharing of individualized learning modules and systems; mastery learning; applications of television to individualized instruction; descriptive and research reports on individualized…

Under a mastery learning system students can take successive parallel tests with study interspersed between tests until they demonstrate a minimal level of competency. For most students, such procedures increase final performance, yet some may experience repeated subjective failure. Self-worth theory predicts that repeated failure in the face of…