The teacher's role as a mediator of social play between severely or profoundly mentally retarded elementary school children and nondisabled peers was investigated in a structured peer interaction program. Two weeks of instruction, followed by four weeks of maintenance, resulted in a strong positive impact. (Author/GDC)

Workshops on effective teaching were attended by three groups of junior high school teachers: those who received no extra activities, those who participated in peer observations, and those who received coaching from the trainer. Behavior change and attitudes were assessed. Peer observation appeared to be more effective than coaching in boosting…

Elementary school teachers were interviewed about the decisions they made during previous lessons. Three hypotheses were developed: (1) teachers' interactive decision making (IDM) is grounded in the lessons and subordinates' cognitive representations of the activity; (2) IDM moves a lesson to completion; and (3) decision rules support this…

Planning and debugging strategies and group processes predicting learning of computer programming were studied in 30 students aged 11 to 14. Students showed little advance planning. Factors associated with learning included high-level planning of program chunks, debugging of single statements, explaining, and verbalizing aloud while typing.…

Subjects studied one of three maps varying in feature configuration and spatial distribution before reading or listening to a related story. There were no differences in recall due to mode of text presentation, but the type of map profoundly influenced recall from both the test and the map. (Author/GDC)

A mathematics learning hierarchy was developed, with examples of lateral and vertical transfer instructional treatments--achievement only, or achievement with understanding--were used with 177 eighth and ninth graders. The achievement with understanding treatment was better for lateral transfer for most students, and vertical transfer for the more…

Correlated Factors Modeling (CFM) is proposed as an alternative to LISREL and similar methods of estimating structural equations. CFM employs weak mathematics and is appropriate for a rapid, preliminary look at a model. The factors produced by CFM are exact linear components of their indicator variates. (Author/GDC)

Students' reported inner speech during mathematics problem solving was studied. Subjects from grades three to six were assigned to low-task or high-task difficulty groups. Between problems, students reported their inner speech. Both groups maintained an adaptive task-oriented problem-solving stance, with positive affect toward self. (Author/GDC)

Construct validity was investigated for three tests of clinical competence in medicine: National Board of Medical Examiners examination (NBME), California Psychological Inventory (CPI), and Resident Evaluation Form (REF). Scores from 166 residents were analyzed. Results suggested low construct validity for CPI and REF scales, and moderate…

The effects of teacher behaviors comprising lesson organization on student achievement were investigated in undergraduate students. Two instructional conditions were proper versus manipulated sequence and explicit organization behaviors present versus absent. Explicit organization had a significant effect on achievement. No significant…

The effects of microcomputer use on preschoolers' knowledge of pre-reading concepts and attitudes toward microcomputers were investigated. Seventy-seven preschoolers were randomly assigned to three treatment conditions: (1) adult-assisted microcomputer instruction; (2) unassisted microcomputer use; and (3) no computer use. Analysis of pretest…

Assuming that the intellectual level of the classroom affects learning environment quality and student achievement, separating students into homogeneous groupings enriches the environment for high-resource students and impoverishes it for low-resource students. The converse occurs under heterogenous mixing. This argument is supported by data from…

This study, conducted in three elementary schools, examined several merit pay issues: (1) the congruence of teachers' ratings of themselves and their peers with principals' ratings; (2) teacher confidence in the ratings by themselves, their peers, and their principals; and (3) the relationship of teaching experience, teacher rating, and teacher…

Using 74 eighth graders, the effects of computer-assisted cooperative, competitive, and individualistic instruction were compared. Computer-assisted cooperative instruction promoted greater quantity and quality of daily achievement, more successful problem solving, more task-related student-student interaction, and increased the perceived status…

This study describes problem solving instruction by nine seventh grade mathematics teachers and compares it to basic skills instruction. Comparison of the activity structures and teacher and observer ratings reveals few major differences between types of instruction. Between-teacher differences in activity structures were greater than differences…