The Oregon component of a four-state project working towards the design of a staff development and school improvement support system is described. Information was gathered from various sources regarding the number and kinds of continued professional development activities engaged in by schools throughout the state. These data were fashioned into a…

PURPOSES OF THIS STUDY WERE--(1) TO TEST EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT COUNSELING ON STUDENTS' STUDY BEHAVIOR, ATTITUDES TO COLLEGE SUCCESS AND STUDY, AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, AND (2) TO EVALUATE USE OF NONPROFESSIONALS IN A PLANNED RESIDENCE HALL COUNSELING PROGRAM. THE THREE RESPONSE CLASSES CONSTITUTED DEPENDENT VARIABLES FOR THE STUDY (SS' USE OF…

EXPERIMENTAL VARIABLES INTENDED TO REPRESENT A CONTINUUM OF REINFORCEMENT FOR SEARCHING BEHAVIOR WERE--REINFORCEMENT BY PRAISE ONLY (1), AND REINFORCEMENT BY PRAISE PLUS INDIRECT GUIDANCE ON HOW TO PROCESS INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE LEARNER (2). A THIRD INSTRUCTIONAL CONDITION REQUIRED MINIMUM TEACHER-LEARNER INTERACTION AND DIRECT PRESENTATION…

AN OLD CHILDREN'S GAME CAN BE USED AS A DEVICE TO TEACH YOUNGSTERS TO FOLLOW INCREASINGLY COMPLEX INSTRUCTIONS. ITS USE WILL INCREASE THE CHILDREN'S ABILITY TO RESPOND SELECTIVELY, PARTICULARLY TO VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS, BY REPLACING THE TYPICAL VISUAL DOMINANCE OF THE CHILD WITH A VERBAL ONE. THE CURRICULUM IS DESIGNED TO MOVE FROM THE SIMPLEST…

Seven 18- to 32-month-old children received from seven to 26 experimental sessions each between October 1966 and April 1967. A session lasted from 5 to 15 minutes and concerned control over the verbal responses of the children with token-operated reinforcement devices. In order to make the results of the experimental sessions meaningful, an…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

A 4-year research project developed a preschool program for exceptional children unable to attend public school but not needing to be institutionalized on the basis of empirical behavioral principles. Children were referred from agencies and most had already unsuccessfully used special school services. The average age was 5-5 years, average IQ was…

This case study reports the use of token reinforcement in remedial reading instruction with an eleven-year-old boy from rural Appalachia. During phase one, tokens were given for reading 50-word passages without error; token value was contingent upon the number of attempts necessary to read without error. During phase two, words missed in phase one…

This paper examines some of the aspects of compliance, its antecedents and consequences, that emerged from a sutdy of 136, 2 1/2 year-old boys. The investigation studied parent-child interaction by means of naturalistic home observation, ratings based on observation and interviews, and experimental procedures. Four compliance criterion measures,…

A guide for future research was developed for professional socialization processes, focusing on graduate education, aspects of career development, disciplinary and departmental ideology, and relationships between socializer and socialee (or faculty or graduate student). The analysis centers around the hypothesis that social distance between a…

Research studies indicate that beginning teachers choose instructional procedures which conflict with their methods courses and that language is the least well-taught of the English instruction components. To deal with both problems in teacher preparation, a study was devised to analyze the effects of a reinforcing module in language instruction,…

This book contains selections from psychologists, social scientists, and educators on the origins and nature of moral reasoning and behavior. Part one is an introduction and is intended to help the reader organize the wealth of theory and research in the field around eight basic questions confronting a science of morality. Part two sets forth…

Personalized systems of instruction (PSI), also called individualized instruction or contingency-managed instruction, were developed in the mid-1960s at the college level by Fred Keller, a reinforcement learning theorist. The Keller plan consists of five features: self-pacing, unit mastery, student tutors, optional motivational lectures, and…

According to the Coleman Report of 1966, the poor child considers his success a matter of fate or luck--something completely out of his control. If a child with this outlook is going to succeed, the child must receive immediate gratification for his educational achievements, and he must be shown that success is the result of a cause-and-effect…

This study investigated the relationship between visual attending and learning in a group of 16 Head Start children from low income families. Attending behavior (defined as "eyes oriented towards the teacher and/or teaching materials for a full 5-second interval") was measured for each child during a 10-minute story period on four…