Academic learning is a complex activity which is not easily modified. Several models have been used to deliver learning improvement programs, including the study skills course and the discrete skills approach. These approaches make few if any accommodations for variations in individual differences or needs. Four factors, however, indicate that…

Research in the Cincinnati public schools indicates that parent involvement in schools can have a major positive impact on education. Specifically, studies have shown that (1) parent involvement can help improve academic achievement and behavior and increase student attendance, (2) parents want to be involved in school, (3) schools need to be…

The author criticizes a number of research designs in which he finds two recurring defects: (1) the differentiation between research and evaluation, with the belief that the two concepts are incompatible, and that if one objective is chosen as the field of action, the other must be avoided; and (2) the nature of evaluation itself. This second…

A 3-year control study was conducted to determine whether the use of self-esteem program materials could have a significant impact on staff or student self-esteem and functioning within the school setting. The study used three experimental schools and three control schools. Teachers in the three experimental schools were provided orientation,…

People who write about children's writing today stress that it is a highly personal process. The process can also be an interpersonal one. The support of other children seems to give security in the writing act. In a secure classroom where it is safe to try new things, there is little danger that a child will become dependent on the group…

Discipline--the most serious problem faced by teachers today--has consistently appeared at or near the top of the public's attitudes toward the public schools. This paper discusses the difficulty of discipline and one of the most perplexing problems facing administrators today--the use of suspension as a discipline alternative. Out-of-school…

For a public speaking instructor, his involvement in forensics as a graduate student led to the use of cameras as an instructional tool. Video technology can be used in the classroom to maximize overall student performance. All graded speeches were videotaped and evaluated in class, which allowed students an extra opportunity to view their peers,…

Guidelines for and obstacles to focusing on student learning outcomes as the primary educational goal are presented in this paper. Five obstacles that impede the focus on student outcomes are the beliefs that: learning should be normally distributed; education's purpose is to select talent; the purpose of testing is for evaluation only; curriculum…

To determine whether teacher intervention or treatment (the introduction of literary devices used by published writers) during the process of writing would lead to greater incidence and improved use of creative devices in gifted children's writing, ten talented students from the ages of six to eleven were selected to meet with the researcher twice…

Ideas of optimizing specific objectives were applied to the problem of allocating computer assisted instruction (CAI) time among students in an elementary school. Then, using computer simulation methodology, it was found that simply increasing the total amount of CAI time used could probably improve overall student progress more than any practical…

The first section of this paper discusses the writing crisis as it applies to education in journalism and offers examples of writing by college students and faculty members to illustrate the depth of the crisis. It cites, however, a recent survey showing that journalism schools across the United States are increasing the emphasis on writing skills…

Tentative results from a study of the writing improvement of college freshmen indicate that underlying linguistic competence can be released by exercises that allow students to use what they already know, that syntactic competence increases with maturity, and that complex pedagogic variables contribute to writing growth. Although a number of…

A study examined the effectiveness of a writing center in improving student writing. All Composition 121 instructors except those who taught in the writing center were included. Students (1519 were enrolled in 69 sections of Composition 121) and instructors were randomly placed into three groups: Group I, the experimental group; Group II, the…

This paper presents a "recorded history" of national leadership standards, a critique of that history, along with a conceptual framework for how the national standards movement is viewed. The analysis offers a deconstruction of the recorded history, emphasizing the specific events surrounding the spread of educational leadership standards. A…

Feedback from assessments should be the foundation for improvements students make in their lab work. Therefore, in this study, a standard rubric that reflected the scientific method was employed as an intervention to assess student lab write-ups. Students preformed three labs all based on consumer research. The first lab was completed without the…