Specific competencies that practicing sociologists and sociologists in academic settings believe are most needed to prepare students for non-academic careers were identified. A total of 504 questionnaires were sent randomly to members of 5 sub-groups of non-academic and academic sociologists. The response rate was 65.8 percent (315 usable…

These papers, presented at the 1981 World Assembly of the International Council of Education for Teaching, describe the methods and status of teacher education programs in the United States, Australia, Ireland, and Malaysia. The first paper, "The Preparation of Educational Personnel for Basic Education," by Robert L. Egbert, introduces the…

With evidence supporting the belief that as a way of decreasing errors sentence combining offers a number of advantages for developmental writing students, a college composition instructor gave 19 developmental writing students five weeks of concentrated sentence combining study with no other instruction or writing practice. The sessions…

Reported is a field test of the basic numerical skills workbook developed for Navy personnel. Two groups of subjects were used at the Recruit Training Command, Orlando, Florida, during early 1980. The design of the workbook, entitled "Improving Your Navy Numerical Skills," was directed toward meeting the needs of personnel who have…

Person fit in the Rasch one parameter model is investigated. The first set of data deals with grade 3 students responding to the mathematics computation and reading vocabulary subscales of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills Forms (CTBS/S). The second set of data deals with grade 3 students responding to the Basic Skills Assessment Program…

Conditions of illiteracy and functional illiteracy frustrate the intent of laws like the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) that provide job training and employment opportunities for the economically disadvantaged, unemployed, or underemployed. The Adult Education Act of 1978 should provide the basic educational skills needed by CETA…

The Alternative Services To Raise Achievement (ASTRA) program at the Greater Hartford (Connecticut) Community College is designed to supply developmental and other services to students with academic potential who are in need of such services to complete their education. The program's structure is intended to meet the diverse needs of students;…

Research for Better Schools (RBS) is supporting improvement efforts in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. One form of this support is RBS's participation in collaborative projects to develop a system-wide, research-utilization approach to the improvement of basic skills instruction. Educational systems following the approach employ a staff…

The effect of a health unit studying the heart on the reading comprehension and vocabulary skills of lower socioeconomic, sixth-grade elementary school pupils was examined in this study. Sixty-four pupils in a midwest elementary school were divided into two heterogeneous classes. One class received instruction on the heart in a program involving…

Ways in which the study of discourse analysis can aid the teacher of basic writing in helping their students to express themselves fluently are explored in this paper. It is noted that remedial writers need to learn to relate abstract ideas to concrete examples and that they seem unable to supply the connections between ideas, especially those of…

The values and progress of the middle school movement are examined in this speech. The impact of the recent emphasis on basic skills and conventional instructional methods on the middle school concept of humanistic education is explored. The author foresees either a frightening, Orwellian future for middle school education in which adolescents are…

Pressure exerted by parents, college instructors, and politically mandated accountability systems have forced English teachers to reevaluate the effectiveness of secondary school curriculums. The temptation to return to the rote-learning and grammar drills of the past, although accentuated by these demands, should not be yielded to. Real English…

The discussion in this paper involves a description of the physical aspects of eight basic skills centers located in area vocational-technical schools across Kansas. These centers are evaluated according to student progress in relation to objectives set by the state in reading, mathematics, technical writing, and oral and written communications.…

This paper describes a developmental writing course at Purdue University. The author argues that the basics of such a course as far as the student is concerned are motivation and a desire to learn writing, communication, careful diagnosis, organized plan for student mastery, provision for transferral, and reward. Helping students develop a desire…

In order to understand better the elemental processes involved in beginning reading (specifically, how cognitive skills are acquired and whether a relationship exists among basic skills), Robert Calfee and colleagues conducted a first-grade reading diary study. Forty target children in 1973-1974 and 50 children in 1974-1975 were observed as they…