This document is a progress report on effecting educational change in a kindergarten program and its interim research findings. A general description of the program and its background are given, followed by an explanation of the diagnostic-prescriptive approach taken in the program. This explanation includes descriptions of the rationale for…

Although the role of the supervisor in education is seriously being challenged by complicated social forces, and the traditional method of simply observing or inspecting classroom performance has lacked guiding conceptual frameworks, the solution does not lie in the election of supervisory representatives or committees, but rather in an intensive…

In studies of classroom behavior modification, the experimenter or educator attempts to make valid judgments about desirable behavioral outcomes. Instruments of assessment to be used with behavior modification treatments must be sensitive to the behavioral goals of principals, teachers, and public school officials. Moreover the treatments used in…

This document describes, in four progress reports, the development and initial projects of a 6-year study, the Montessori Research Project, which is seeking to determine the benefits to preschool children of various educational programs, specifically, Montessori programs versus non-Montessori programs. The study is being conducted by the…

Thirty classrooms (10 preschool, 10 kindergarten, and 10 first grade) in New York and Chicago were observed in this study of teacher and student verbal behavior. The study investigated the extent to which pupils imitate a rewarding teacher's verbal style when talking among themselves. From the 10 classes at each grade level, the six that showed…

This report describes Head Start classroom activity, contains data on the children from a testing program, and includes teacher ratings of pupils on a Classroom Adjustment Checklist. (Individual data is being preserved for follow-up studies.) Classroom observations were made in 13 of 27 Head Start classrooms, while testing activities and teacher…

The Classroom Attitude Observational Schedule (CAOS) is designed to detect pattern shifts in a classroom during the absence of controlling adults. It is concerned with the independent learner who will continue school related tasks in a socially acceptable manner without supervision. The CAOS recording form notes activities and inappropriate…

The purpose of this study was to compare aspects of educational environments in elementary schools which differed in the degree to which programs were individualized flexible, and diverse; and architectures were open. Fifteen classes were assigned to the cells of a factorial design, and data on educational environments were collected from teachers…

The usefulness of item sampling with unobtrusive measures and observational data is demonstrated. Particular emphasis is given to the question: Is item sampling appropriate for estimating the differences between means as well as the means themselves? A descriptive analysis is made of one aspect of a junior high school curriculum. Twenty four…

This paper describes Project on Involvement, which was designed to investigate student involvement in a task by defining it in terms of nonverbal behaviors and by identifying its dimensions. To accomplish these objectives, eight trained graduate students made 15-minute observations of each of 44 preschool children. The children were observed in…

This paper reports an exploratory study in nonverbal communication, which had two objectives: (1) to look closely at touching as a communicative behavior and to describe the categories of behaviors; and (2) to evaluate the "Form for Observation of Physical Contact," developed in a previous study. A total of 47 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds,…

The objective of the project was to unify the efforts of the classroom teacher and the college faculty in observing and guiding the teacher trainee in classroom teaching practice. Two coding systems, one on teacher behavior and one on pupil behavior, were used to establish a common language for professional dialogue on description of and…

The purpose of this study was to collect data on behavior, including educational media usage, in a wide range of educational settings through use of participant observation. Eight special education teachers and their classrooms were used. An instrument adapted from the OSTRAQ system was used to measure 12 categories of pupil-teacher interaction…

A nursery school teacher received three types of training in self-observation skills, which were compared with regard to their effects on the accuracy of the self-observations. Minimal training consisted of a brief description of the behaviors to be recorded. The feedback condition incorporated daily information about the accuracy of the…

This report is Part I of a study of program implementation in 12 models of Head Start Planned Variation. Chapters examine (1) how well models are implemented, using sponsor ratings of teachers as the data source; (2) the factors which may influence the extent to which models are implemented, such as sponsor input, staff reaction and input, and the…