Many people enter the early childhood field because they enjoy working with children. But unlike an elementary school teacher who usually teaches by herself in a self-contained classroom, early childhood professionals interact as much with the other adults in the classroom and the program as they do with the children. To be successful in early…

States open education results from an educational philosophy (not spatial manipulation), whereby the whole child may be developed mentally, emotionally, and socially. Suggests inherent advantages of the self-contained classroom provide a viable environment for open education. (AH)

From his knowledge of the brain and learning, the author argues that Horace Mann's classroom system is the core cause for the outdated state of public education and attendant problems. He asserts that the conventional classroom is brain-antagonistic and the continued use of graded classrooms, ruinous. (Author/WD)

The author cites advantages of separate classes for gifted students, suggesting that they should be protected from teachers who do not understand them and school environments with which they are bored. (CL)

Effective individualized instruction depends primarily on the teacher possessing the skills to implement it. Individualization is therefore quite compatible with the traditional self-contained elementary classroom model, but not with its alternative, departmentalization, which allows teachers neither the time flexibility nor the familiarity with…

The author considers possible educational changes in serving learning disabled students and cites opinions of others such as P. Daniels, who advocates return to self-contained classrooms, and J. Goodlad, who suggests that schools are trying to do too much. (CL)

The response cost (RC) procedure has been applied in regular classrooms and playgrounds, self-contained and resource rooms, and residential settings with normal children and elementary-age, behavior-disordered children. RC involves the removal of previously awarded or earned reinforcers for the purpose of reducing deviant, maladaptive, or…

Flexibility is a key term to emphasize when grouping students for instruction, since a student might be in a different group for one academic area as compared to another academic area. This paper describes grouping for different methods of reading instruction and other disciplines. The paper discusses the following: using basal readers, using…

Suggests that there is a "second system" of specialist teachers and that this system has largely failed to fulfill the goal of accelerating the literacy development of participating children. Explores a "whole day model" as an alternative to the highly regulated "second system," wherein the classroom teacher would assume the responsibility for the…