This study was designed to look for patterns of parental behavior by assessing styles of child rearing in a novel way--through responses on an interactive computer program simulating an average day in the life of a mother and a preschooler. Presented to each subject (39 mothers of preschoolers and a control group of non-mothers) were 30 common…

This paper focuses on the lack of productive knowledge-building in social education research by raising issues related to the place of scholarship in the field, the nature of its goals, and whether empirical-scientific research can be carried out to meet those goals. Attention is drawn to the limits of educational research based on untenable…

Without support, financial, organizational and otherwise, the U.S. national IEA writing study would never have been conducted; however, implementation of the study was difficult. Planning for the study and its support commenced in 1980, coterminous with two important occurrences: the National Institute of Education pulled back on its interest in…

This hearing addresses the topic of violence in media as it may affect children. Testimony given concerns ways television influences preschool children's play behavior and classroom activities, positive and negative effects of television on children, the causal link between television violence and children's aggressive behavior inadequacies of…

Dissemination of educational knowledge to practitioners can best be improved by creating contexts in which practitioners are able to participate in the research and in the interpretation of the knowledge gained through the research. It is noted that the distinctions between researchers and practitioners are beginning to break down, largely as a…

Arguments and research studies examining whether people prefer arbitration or mediation to resolve a conflict between disputing parties are discussed, critiqued, and compared. In both mediation and arbitration a presumably neutral third party is involved, along with disputants, as an element of the dispute-resolution process. Mediation and…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in its expansion of data reporting, should consider approaches for studying the curricular content of elementary and secondary instruction and student achievement of curricular goals. More specific information is needed about the curricular content of U.S. education. For example, data collected…

Building communication theory in terms of three-variable relationships is a promising route to developing better theory, because three-variable relationships stand midway between sometimes overly simplistic two-variable relationships, and the more complex path analysis. The analysis of three-variable relationships has been done in many previous…

This paper examines and critiques several learning style inventories (LSI) in an effort to find the optimal research instrument for a proposed empirical study of both the quality of courseware and the impact of courseware characteristics on variations of learning effectiveness due to learner characteristics. Five LSIs are examined: (1) Dunn LSI;…

This paper reviews critical issues in the assessment and modification of children's social competence and reports on preliminary data collected in a longitudinal study of children's social behavior. A number of unanswered applied research questions concerning assessment and modification of social competence are noted: (1) Specific behaviors of…

Fitting educational research to Latin America's developmental needs is a political issue involving differences in perspectives of Latin American and United States researchers, Latin American governments, and agencies concerned with development outside Latin America. A comparison of ERIC's "Current Index to Journals in Education" with the…

Four influential studies on school effectiveness reported by Brookover and Lezotte (1979), Edmonds and Frederiksen (1979), Phi Delta Kappa (1980), and Rutter and others (1979) are limited in their usefulness as recipes for creating effective schools by the following four issues: (1) The four studies differ in their definition of what…

In order for education to evolve from a craft to a profession, a spirit of inquiry must be infused into the beliefs and activities of education faculty members and practicing teachers. For faculty members in professional schools, the responsibilities of teaching, research, and service should be integrated activities for which inquiry serves as the…

This paper acknowledges that research on school dropouts presents problems in the definitions and computation of dropout indices. It considers a variety of methods for computing dropout rates, using dropout rates which are real and which were available at the end of the 1986-1987 school year. Fall enrollment, average daily membership, and total…

The National Center for Education Statistics supported this conference as a first step in a dialogue among forecasters to benefit all in the field. Fifty forecasters representing 20 different federal agencies attended the day-long session. Objectives of the conference include: (1) to bring forecasters together for a forum to share information on…