Mastery learning offers a way for teachers to offer individualized instruction to students and to help more of their students be successful in learning. Practical implications of using the mastery learning approach are described, followed by evidence of its effectiveness. (JDD)

The movement concept approach to teaching elementary physical education provides challenges that require children to use all their resources to respond, enhancing total development through cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Worksheets can help teachers determine whether movement concepts are being learned and generalized to other…

The NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) is described as a measure of five factors of personality and its use in clinical assessment and treatment practice is reviewed. Data from 17 adult men and women show links between NEO-PI scales and other measures of psychopathology. (SLD)

National Assessment of Educational Progress writing sample essays from 1988 and 1990 (495 and 599 essays) were subjected to computerized grading and human ratings. Cross-validation suggests that computer scoring is superior to a two-judge panel, a finding encouraging for large programs of essay evaluation. (SLD)

A meta-analysis including 96 experimental studies considers the effects of reinforcement/reward on intrinsic motivation. Results indicate that reward does not decrease intrinsic motivation, although interaction effects must be examined. An analysis with five studies also indicates that reinforcement does not harm intrinsic motivation. (SLD)

It is argued that there are only three core instructional models (behavior, development, and apprenticeship) and that within the framework of these models, only five types of knowledge can be acquired: (1) declarative; (2) procedural; (3) conceptual; (4) analogical; and (5) logical. Examples are presented. (SLD)

When item response data do not satisfy the unidimensionality assumption, multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) should be used to model the item-examinee interaction. This article presents and discusses MIRT analyses designed to give better insight into what individual items are measuring. (SLD)

Responses from 16 (62%) nursing degree courses in the United Kingdom uncovered great variation in the number of hours spent in biological sciences and in science entry requirements. Most bioscience teachers had a degree in the subject, but few were nurses. Shared teaching (nursing and science teachers) caused discontinuity and neglected to make…

This study examined how reinforcer rate, quality, delay, and response effort combined to influence the choices of six adolescents with emotional disturbance and learning difficulties and the feasibility of an assessment methodology based on matching theory for determining differential responsiveness to reinforcer and response dimensions. Results…

Considers the role and effectiveness of virtual reality in simulation-based training. The theoretical and practical implications of verity, integration, and natural versus artificial interface are discussed; a three-dimensional classification scheme for virtual reality is described; and the relationship between virtual reality and other…

A theoretical conceptualization of training needs assessment is developed using the example of distance education of paramedical personnel (nurses) in the developing countries of Africa. Accurate training needs analysis and a baseline survey are essential for program development. (SLD)

A 14-item instrument, the Dentist Satisfaction Survey-14, a form of a previously validated instrument, is described. Use with 522 dentists, and 29 in a follow-up, indicates that the short form is a parsimonious tool for general evaluation of dentists' job satisfaction. (SLD)

The seven articles of this special feature consider the role of evaluation in learning organizations. They draw on applications in business and industry, public schools, higher education, a community arts agency, and a foreign township to illustrate the importance of evaluation in the growth of learning organizations. (SLD)

Examines students' summaries of three lectures. Finds that the percentage, but not the number, of propositions correlated positively with the accuracy scores in the summaries. Suggests that analyses of errors, lexical substitutions, discrepancies in grades, and differences in students' scores for the different lectures revealed interesting results…

Discusses the ways that one English teacher researched her student's language patterns and used that information to adjust her teaching. Considers the difficulty of changing ingrained habits of nongrammatical usage in student speech and writing. (HB)