The status of recent research on staff development and inservice education for teachers, administrators, and other school personnel was reviewed in studies completed between 1977 and 1984. More than 400 articles from 23 professional journals and 507 doctoral dissertations were analyzed. For each study, the research design and procedures, purposes…

A study was conducted to test a model of relational competence that consisted of three components: motivation, knowledge, and skill in interaction for both participants in a conversation. The model is based on the assumption that the additive combination of these components for both participants will be significantly predictive of several…

The literature of the effective schools movement argues for three very different images of what constitutes leadership, which are regarded in this paper as confused images of leadership. The first image is of a supremely pragmatic but rational actor, the second is of a leader who adheres to the norms typical of the local community culture, and the…

Educational reform commissions and state departments of education across the United States have recommended that would-be administrators spend more time in planned field experiences, internships, and other practica and on-the-job learning activities. Despite this need, systematic research on experiential learning for administrators is remarkably…

Two analytic models, each with different implications for data analysis, have been used in behavioral science research for assessing attitudinal congruency. The term relative congruence applies to the family of agreement indices which, although functions of the absolute index, are formulated relative to chance expectations. The term absolute…

This review considers two major areas--research on educational media and research on school media centers (learning resource centers). Research reviewed in this report is limited to studies carried out in public school settings or that deal with issues of concern in public education. An introduction discusses the changing definition of…

Evaluation, as currently practiced in vocational education, may not contribute to program improvement; in fact, it may be counterproductive. Rather than asking how evaluations can be improved, it might be better to ask if a relationship does, in fact, exist between evaluation and program improvement and, if such a relationship exists, what new…

This manuscript is a report of the third revision of the Maryland Preschool Self-Concept of Scale originally developed by Smith (1977). Two samples of 4-, 5-, and 6-year old children (N = 54 and N = 78) were administered the Maryland Preschool Self-Concept Scale - Revised (MPSS-R). In the first study, the measure was given twice, 3 to 5 weeks…

Although there has been a significant amount of research on the families of drug abusers, this field has encountered a number of obstacles to its continued growth. Some of these problems include an emphasis of research on opiate use, methodological hindrances, and lack of a constituency. A review of two concurrent national processes, the White…

Since a 1970 study found differential mental health standards for men and women, studies evaluating the impact of such standards on psychotherapy treatment plans have been mixed. Two recent investigations were designed to correct for earlier problems in archival research, and a third was designed to correct for the analogue problem of using…

Critics have suggested that research on practice professions, such as teaching, and on their associated institutions could be strengthened by involving practitioners as research collaborators. As part of a larger investigation of a community-based teacher center, a study was undertaken to identify: (1) special issues inherent in a research design…

Following a discussion of various methods of evaluating the effectiveness of developmental programs, this paper presents a research design for the evaluation of a developmental math program. First, the paper examines the objectives and benefits of conducting formative and summative program evaluations. The paper then identifies the single group…

Described and critiqued are studies that attempt to describe how personality factors affect foreign policy decision making. Political behavior cannot be explained in terms of personality alone. Such an attempt is a psychological reductionism that ignores the chains of causation that run from underlying personality construct to social and political…

There are at least four distinct uses of the term "competence" in speech communication: (1) to refer to some set of standards used in evaluating aspects of communication processes, (2) to refer to some set of objects to be evaluated, (3) to refer to a method for evaluating aspects of communication against some standard, and (4) to refer to a…

White subjects were asked to evaluate toddler behavior after viewing a 14-minute film of a white child and a black child playing spontaneously. Each toddler was presented as both a male and a female to 208 well-educated adult subjects. In Treatment I, the children were called John and Mike; in Treatment II, Jane and Mary; in Treatment III, John…