Student teachers' conceptions of their own successful and unsuccessful lessons were recorded in journals kept during field experience. The student teachers were asked to describe both the most and the least successful lessons taught during the first 2 weeks and again during the final weeks of student teaching. Journals were separated into…

The study attempted to: (1) identify and examine college teachers' espoused and implicit theories of teaching, using Menges and Rando's analysis categories; and (2) explore differences between assumptions about traditional and non-traditional students when college teachers based their diagnoses of problematic events on untested speculations.…

This paper is a review of the research literature related to theories of reasoning and teacher thinking. Judgment theory, decision theory, and problem-solving theory are discussed. Reviews are provided for studies from three major research projects on teacher thinking: The Institute for Research on Teaching, Special Study C of the Beginning…

One aim of this study was to identify, in a group of unsuccessful college level problem solvers, the status and use of their declarative knowledge as revealed by students' attempts to solve novel problems in a pencil-and-paper setting. It was hypothesized that for some unsuccessful problem solvers, their problem representation could be improved by…

A study was made to determine characteristics of teacher-composed classroom tests, with emphasis placed on describing the levels of knowledge addressed by the test items. In this preliminary investigation, 19 mathematics and 16 science teachers working in 4 high schools in a mixed suburban/rural school district were asked to: (1) complete a brief…

The primary objective of this study was to describe those mental processes involved in teacher planning decisions made prior to teaching. One elementary teacher's planning decisions were studied during five months of classroom instruction. Both ethnographic and information processing approaches were used to describe distinctive features of the…

This report describes activities undertaken during Phase I of a two-year project sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education to prepare, evaluate, and distribute a print-based curriculum which will encourage the development of critical television viewing skills in teenagers, and to develop television viewing skills guides and workshops for parents…

Traditional quantitative-experimental models of evaluation have failed to contribute to educational reform; they should be supplemented by qualitative-subjective models, which can be grouped under the rubric of naturalistic, or non-experimental evaluation. This naturalistic approach does not attempt to be value-free; rather, it recognizes that…

A published rater manual used by sixty elementary school teachers to assess moral thought statements was found ineffective. The study also examined what factors were related to their assessing ability. The subjects took a pretest using only descriptions of the six moral stages originally researched by Lawrence Kohlberg. Next the teachers were…

One competency to be demonstrated by future teachers in the OCE ComField program is defined in terms of their ability to bring about a wide range of cognitive responses on the part of pupils, indicating that the pupil is using a variety of mental operations, which include divergent thinking memory, evaluative thinking, and identifying common…

Using Guilford's model, the text reviews the structure of the intellect (SOI) and its operations, contents, and products. Those operations and components are further described, including the factors of cognition, memory, evaluation, convergent-production, and divergent-production. For each factor, the figural, symbolic, and semantic dimensions are…

A total of 168 Negro and 296 white Medical Technicians participated in this study. A nine-scale performance rating form was developed and administered. Every technician was rated by at least two supervisors. A test of job knowledge was also given to all subjects. Among the correlations found were: (1) Negro workers received distinctly higher…

Several consultants address the issue of competencies required of professional librarians for the effective management of the automation process. Highlights include formal and professional ongoing education and the need for technical training and problem solving skills to enable librarians to evaluate and develop library systems effectively.…

Reviews a study of 167 British secondary school students which evaluated a course developed to improve television literacy by focusing on skills related to recall and drawing inferences from and making judgements about programs. Pretests and posttests given to groups divided by ability levels are described and results are analyzed. (Author/LRW)

Nine college classes on Communist political systems were evaluated, according to students' memory and comprehension of information; ability to apply, analyze and synthesize the information; and beliefs and values toward selected Communist States and issues involving Socialism and Communism. (Author/GDC)