A statewide survey of 536 randomly selected Virginia secondary school teachers of academic subjects explored practices and opinions concerning various aspects of classroom testing and grading. The main focus was on the use of preestablished percentage scales as a basis for evaluating students. The responses suggested that large proportions of…

Educators working with elementary school children need to consider the impact of unstructured and structured hypermedia on the learning occurring in computer-assisted instruction. This paper discusses a case study of a collaborative group of four boys during a summer science camp. Their interactions with two different examples of hypermedia are…

A discussion of classroom communication looks at the function of questions, particularly teacher-initiated pedagogical questions but also other classroom questions, either teacher- or student-initiated. Two fourth grade science lessons, conducted in Brazil by different teachers, are analyzed. Analysis focuses on the relative effects of the…

Participatory research began as a reaction to traditional social science research methodology, which tended to make persons into objects of study. It had its beginnings in Tanzania around 1970, when a group of farmers participated in research to assess and solve the problem of losses of grain harvests. The process grew out of the philosophy of…

Guided by interpretive ethnographic methods and by instructional leadership concepts, this comparative study of secondary principals in Japan and America discovers characteristics of excellent principals and examines their values in relation to dominant cultural themes. The investigation applies anthropologist Clifford Goertz's assumptions (1973,…

University admission requirements and achievement levels at the time of secondary school graduation are compared for five countries: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Japan, and West Germany. Emphasis is placed upon the structural and cultural differences in the educational systems of these countries. In addition to college admission…

Even at this early date in the application of biotechnology to agriculture, it is clear that agriculture may provide the largest market for new or less expensive biotechnologically manufactured products. The chemical and pharmaceutical industries that hold important positions in agricultural inputs are consolidating their positions by purchasing…

A followup study conducted in 19 high schools throughout Oregon involved 1,296 early leavers and graduates of the class of 1981. Both vocational education and nonvocational students participated. Data came from three sources--surveys of former students, transcripts and permanent files of these students, and program rating data from vocational…

A study commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the United States examined the status of area studies on contemporary Germany in American postsecondary education. It surveyed 50 institutions concerning the status of teaching and research on contemporary Germany in selected fields of the humanities, social sciences, and professional education.…

The inconsistency of results to be found in the study of the impact of school desegregation arises in part from the failure to appreciate the complexity of the phenomenon. This report takes a broader view of school desegregation; the basic dependent variables are school level means in the following basic areas: (1) racial attitudes, (2) political…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of a series of print materials and interactive computer-guided study programs designed to lead undergraduate students to apply basic textbook reading and concept mapping strategies to the study of science and social science textbooks. Following field testing with 25 learning skills students, 50 freshman biology…

Research has established that students generally possess conceptions relevant to curricular topics before they begin to study them and that these preconceptions often persist despite instruction on scientific theories which contradict them. Discrepancies between students' post instruction conceptions and the scientific theories as taught often…

A sample of 245 Chicano, Black, and Anglo children, grades 2-9, from three midwestern states was chosen for a comparative study of moral judgment, to measure differences among the ethnic groups and to determine whether they made the same progression through Kohlberg's three levels of moral development. Subjects viewed video tapes of five moral…

Wait time, or the pauses between questions and responses, has been demonstrated to be an important factor influencing classroom learning. This paper reviews the key variables that have emerged in wait time research over the past 20 years. Progress in defining and measuring wait time has resulted in improved methodology for wait time research.…

The paper describes a study of deviant behavior among students attending a high school in Texas. All students in the study attended a sociology class taught by a very strict teacher whose rules of behavior conflicted with students' peer group behavior expectations. Participant observation of student behavior in class and interviews with individual…