The progress of a novice ethnographic researcher is traced from problems associated with a pilot study through the production of a final draft of her dissertation--an observational case study. Focus is on the data analysis process, the development of conceptual maps leading to an emergent grounded theory, and writing the dissertation. Research…

This paper develops the idea of "the authority of experience" to explain the unease about teacher education represented in comments of 19 graduate students enrolled in a preservice physics education methods course which combined on-campus classes and teaching placements. Interviews with the student teachers after the first half of the…

This paper describes an inservice teacher education project entitled "Educating the Low Achieving Child in the Regular Classroom" offered to Christian-oriented nonpublic urban schools that are committed to mainstreaming children with learning differences. The project provided training to increase teachers' flexibility and ability to…

This document reports on the work of a task force charged with formulating recommendations on the kind of preparation an incoming student should have to assure successful entry to and completion of the freshman year of study at the State University of New York (SUNY). In addition, the task force was asked to specify what program of study and forms…

This book addresses the needs of college and university instructors for an integrative, comprehensive approach to teaching and learning in higher education. The book has two purposes: first, to place teaching and learning in higher education within a theoretical framework, and second, to provide practical strategies for teaching. The introductory…

This essay explores the roots and implications of stance, which helps examine the daily practice of educating new teachers. Stance is about the positioning involved in teaching. It depends on a postmodern view of reality as being situational and interpreted, rather than fixed and predefined. In literacy education, a reader's relationship to text…

This report examines factors contributing to grade repetition in rural elementary schools in Honduras. Forty schools in four Honduran departments were randomly selected from lists of schools with the highest and lowest repetition rates. Subjects were 1,854 students in Grade 1 or 3 during the 1990 school year who were still in the school in March…

This study used a triangulated methodology involving ethnographic interviews, opinionnaires, and rank ordering of student concerns to discover variables that impacted student teachers as they passed through developmental stages. Data collected from interviews with five elementary student teachers were used to discover a developmental theory of…

Societal changes of the past three decades call for a fundamental change in the structure of the educational system and in the culture of schooling. Disadvantaged African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos, in particular, historically have suffered from the cultural misalignment of home, school, and community. The reform of educational…

To prepare teachers for working with diverse student populations, teacher education reform must advance from a course in multicultural education to the level of an organized and integrated component of the teacher education curriculum. This roundtable discussion identifies the major principles at issue in bringing about such a change in the…

To explore the suggestion that subjects modulate their reading strategies in accordance with how they expect to be tested, several test expectancies (multiple-choice, true/false, essay, and cloze) were implemented in addition to a non-specific test expectancy as a control. Subjects were 124 students at Purdue University (Indiana). After reading…

As the United States continues to become more ethnically, culturally, and racially diverse, schools face an increasingly heterogeneous population of students. Public schools have implemented programs to meet the needs of these diverse cultural groups and to assist them in integrating into society. This book presents an introduction to various…

Students (n=358) completing the teacher admissions process at a university in the southeastern United States were asked to rank the characteristics of their best teacher and their worst teacher in grades K-12. They most frequently reported that personal relationships formed between teacher and students greatly influenced the effectiveness of the…

A study involving 233 seventh-grade students (123 females and 110 males) attending a metropolitan southeastern Idaho junior high school was conducted to determine predictors of seventh-grade mathematics achievement. The seventh-grade mathematics program consisted of 11 classes of four ability groups. The classes included a pre-Algebra class, four…

This descriptive study examined the interaction between 25 mentally retarded (MR) adult participants in a physical education setting and 51 physical education majors. The study was designed to identify and analyze the causal attributions of physical education majors concerning MR adults' motor performance, to identify and analyze the causal…