Designed to help trainee child caregivers working in military care centers make decisions relating to real problems, this staff development module examines how caregivers can create an optimal environment for children. Discussions focus on respecting children's individual differences, being aware of feelings and personal style in dealing with…

Presbyopia, a condition which affects the eye's ability to change focus or to produce a clear image, makes an appropriate analogy through which to consider educational access for special needs students. Presbyopia can be corrected with properly fitted glasses; new "glasses" should be "prescribed" for teachers so that distortions related to student…

An overview of research on elementary secondary classroom teaching presents a synthesis of findings from large-scale, classroom-based studies on teacher effectiveness. Three sets of major research efforts, dealing with classroom management and organization, systematic instruction, and effective instruction, were selected for review. Certain…

Alternative teacher education programs have come under fire from a variety of sources--researchers, legislators, parents, even other educators. The authors' responses to the focus article provide the insights of practitioners who regularly work with teachers so prepared. Warren states that the problem addressed in this study notes the absence of…

In a study of 30 elementary school teachers' perceptions of the rewards of teaching, two major types of intrinsic rewards were found. One kind of reward came from enjoying interactions with the students regardless of the outcome. The other type of reward is achievement oriented and results from feeling instrumental in students' accomplishments.…

In this study, teachers were asked to complete questionnaires designed to determine how they handle 16 typical classroom problems concerning students' failures to conform to the academic achievement or social behavior norms of the school. In one form of the questionnaire, 156 teachers from 14 schools were presented with hypothetical profiles of…

Ethnography as a classroom observation method addresses itself to the situations, events, patterns, and contexts that exist in a classroom at a given time. A priori categorical observation and evaluation systems measure what the system is designed to "see," and may fail to record anomolies and salient events that affect teaching and learning in…

Teaching strategies used by precepters at a hospital-based family medicine center were investigated with seven preceptors who had previous teaching experiences and were board certified (six in family medicine). A third-year senior resident presented and discussed two patient cases to the preceptors in separate one-to-one teaching sessions, and the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the ways in which three tenth grade English teachers in a suburban school district established procedural and academic routines. Two classes of each teacher were videotaped for the first ten days of the school year. The teachers were selected because they taught students of comparable ability, and because…

Two studies of teaching roles used by faculty in baccalaureate and higher degree nursing programs are discussed. The first study examined perceived clinical teaching roles identified by nurse faculty members who taught in clinical laboratory settings. Responses from 30 interviews revealed that: (1) The most commonly perceived role was that of…

The teacher program described here provides a framework in which teachers may identify and understand their own theories and styles of teaching and may become familiar and competent with a variety of teaching strategies. The seven models studied are: concept formation, concept attainment, role playing, inquiry training. synectics, simulation, and…

This study tests the effects on student achievement and attitude of two methods of reviewing homework problems in mathematics. One review procedure involved solving and explaining each homework problem the day after an assignment was made. In the second procedure, only the problems that students requested to have reviewed were covered. Two Algebra…

The Discovery-Expository Instrument is a classroom observation scale which measures the position of a teacher's presentation on a continuum of discovery presentation (in which the student is encouraged to solve problems with minimal help from the teacher), to expository presentation (in which the teacher provides a complete description and…

Three methods of teaching--traditional lecture, Socratic, and radical humanist-- are examined as they are used at the college level of instruction. It is argued that these methods are based on teaching theories that differ from one another in terms of assumptions about the teacher-student relationship, the nature of knowledge and truth, the…

An instrument was developed for observing teaching behaviors related to some of the theoretical components of inquiry teaching. Four scales were designed to measure personalized planning, confrontational emphasis, transitional querying, and manipulative opportunities. Inter-rater reliability was obtained for ten taped samples of secondary social…