Examined emotional relationships between teachers and their students. Interviews with principals and seventh- and eighth-grade teachers who were very committed to several educational reforms indicated that teachers valued emotional bonds formed with students and appreciated the purposes of educating their students as emotional, social, and…

Because of a 50% drop-out rate of first-year to second-year students at Mountain Empire Community College, retention was identified as a priority. Students and faculty were surveyed to determine causes of student withdrawals, a summer retreat was held, and a retention task force was created to develop a comprehensive retention plan for the fall of…

A high-school English teacher explains how she transformed her listless, "drive-thru" classes into "partnership" classes with highly motivated students eager to demonstrate and evaluate their skills. Students could work at their own best pace so long as the work got done and had acceptable quality. (MLH)

The New Standards Project, attempting to create an assessment system comprised of performance exams, portfolios and projects, may not have fulfilled its promise to create a national system of tests worth teaching to. However, NSP did deliver high- quality professional-development opportunities for hundreds of teachers across the nation. (Contains…

Describes a computer tutorial that teaches the fundamentals of stimulus generalization in operant learning. Concepts covered include reinforcement, discrimination learning, stimulus continua, generalization, generalization gradients, and peak shift. The tutorial also reviews applications in human and animal situations. The content is appropriate…

Examined how child care teachers' socialization practices and child characteristics jointly predicted children's sympathetic-prosocial responding. Found that child characteristics and socialization practices played an important role in children's interpersonal functioning, and the ability of the teacher to interact in a warm, affectionate way was…

Interviews with 32 teachers in 8 California school districts examined how teachers responded to Proposition 227. Three teacher reactions were identified: outward defiance, clarification of pedagogical purpose, and anxiety in the face of change. Key factors in these reactions were teacher ideology and experiences and the course of implementation…

Video is an effective educational tool in English Literature classes when the teacher is creative in its application. Video has five specific properties which make it an effective instructional device: (1) condensing or expanding an experience; (2) making the invisible visible; (3) taking the viewers where they could not go; (4) eliciting…

A qualitative study of four Chicano high school students involved in a range of disciplinary actions revealed students' feelings of alienation, substantive differences in student and teacher perceptions of misbehavior, student perceptions of injustices in rule applications, poor classroom management and instructional techniques, the basis of…

Compares the effects of different kinds of visual presentations, and music alone, on university nonmusic students' affective and cognitive responses to music. Separate groups of students listened to classical music excerpts, either by themselves, or with video accompaniment. They rated the music on Likert-type scales and responded to open-ended…

Used maternal beliefs, emotions, and experiences of Canadian and Swedish mothers to predict hypothetical physical punishment of preschoolers. Found that Canadians were more likely than Swedes to suggest physical punishment and demonstrate stronger support for spanking. Support for physical punishment and rating target misbehaviors as stable…

Examined the effects of sequential feedback on preservice physical educators' instructional interactions with students, assessing the influence of differential sequential interactions on student skill practice. Observational data indicated that sequential feedback consistently increased the incidence of refinement and explicit instruction within…

Discusses the role of early childhood educators in helping young children express their feelings safely and work out their conflicts constructively, because without healing, learning and growth are impaired. Describes techniques teachers can use to be supportive to children during the healing process and simple activities that help children…

Debriefing is an important phase in using simulation games. Participants are invited to make a connection between experiences gained from playing the game and experiences in real-life situations. Thus, debriefing is the phase meant to encourage learning from the simulation game. Although design and practice of debriefing sessions should be aligned…

Although the literature on reinforcement in behavioral psychology is extensive, few studies have examined the derived transformation of reinforcing functions in accordance with equivalence classes, and no published research has yet examined the derived transformation of consequential functions in accordance with nonequivalence relations. In the…