To analyze a student's conceptual changes, analyzing transcriptions of writing and verbal statements may not provide enough information. In a study of 25 sixth graders learning about matter and molecules, concept mapping of students' stated ideas was used to analyze the kinds of organizational changes the students made to use new science…

This guide is designed for early childhood educators who are helping their staffs implement the Creative Curriculum for Early Childhood, a curriculum that is based on child development theory and is developmentally appropriate for preschool and kindergarten children. A carefully organized and rich environment serves as the focus of this…

This monograph describes Project START (Support To Affirm Rising Talent), a three-year collaborative research effort to develop and apply gifted identification procedures based on Howard Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences. Specifically, the study attempted to: (1) develop identification procedures; (2) identify high-potential…

The guide is one section of a resource kit designed to assist Peace Corps language instruction coordinators in countries around the world in understanding the principles underlying second language learning and teaching and in organizing instructional programs. This section focuses on selection and supervision of language teachers. An introductory…

This book is intended to help early childhood practitioners develop the essential understanding they require for appropriate use of assessment and evaluation information and to illuminate many of the issues involved in formal and informal assessment and evaluation. The chapters are: (1) "Assessment and Evaluation in the Early Childhood…

An in-depth investigation of the inner components of cooperative learning methodologies was made, concentrating on five basic research questions. These were: (1) Do teacher's focusing questions and interaction with students during cooperative learning facilitate students' critical thinking skills? (2) In what ways do cooperative learning groups…

Teacher evaluation remains a controversial and disruptive area. The problems arise from the way evaluations are carried out. In many cases the evaluation system used is the problem. This book discusses teacher evaluation by providing characteristics separating effective and less effective systems. It presents eight commonalities identified in…

Mills College (California) was one of three sites selected to participate in a project designed to apply and use research in elementary teacher education. The project trained student teachers and cooperating teachers to measure academic learning time and active teacher behaviors with instruments developed by recent research on teacher…

This handbook is designed to assist training developers and evaluators in structuring their collection of feedback data. Addressed first are various methods for collecting feedback data, including informal feedback, existing unit performance records, questionnaires, structured interviews, systematic observation, and testing. The next chapter, a…

The All Day Kindergarten (ADK) program was established in five schools within the Wichita (Kansas) Public School System during the 1988-89 school year. The goal was to establish a full-day balanced readiness program that would enhance skill building in the cognitive, social/emotional, and motor development areas. A formative evaluation was…

This report is based on an ethnographic study of a multicultural "college prep" program catering to minority students. It was part of the elective bilingual education offering at a large urban high school, and recorded an 11-year history of successfully graduating Hispanic high school students and sending at least 65% of them on to college. The…

Writing to Read (WTR) is a computer-based instructional system designed to develop writing and reading skills. In the fall of 1985, the WTR program was implemented for the first time in some kindergarten and first-grade classes in Fort Worth Independent School District, (Texas) elementary schools. Research was conducted to evaluate: (1) the…

Two issues that bear directly on the proficiency of teachers are teacher selection and teacher supervision. A theme common to both issues is that the key to attracting and retaining capable teachers lies in a transformation of teachers' work environment--replacing the bureaucratic model of schooling with the professional model. That transformation…

This report contains a description of the conceptual background and methodology for a study concerning how academic tasks are managed in senior high school classrooms. This high school study is Phase 2 of the Managing Academic Tasks (MAT) study. The MAT study is focused on understanding how curriculum experiences are shaped by the classroom…

A study examined the organizational factors inhibiting and facilitating implementation of an innovation in an educational setting. The innovative program selected as the subject of this ethnographic study was Georgia's parenting education program. Data were collected from field interviews of teachers, observations of parenting education classes,…