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Latinx students now make up the largest share of charter school students nationally. In this article, I focus on Latinx charter school choosers in Houston, Texas, and ask what motivates Latinx parents to exit district schools. Drawing on interviews with 31 families, I find that perceptions of present and future risk motivate charter school choice. Perceptions of present risk centered on children's negative experiences with safety and academics and parents' negative experiences when they attempted to intervene in district schools. Perceptions of future risk focused on future district schools and relied on information from networks, observations, and the educational experiences of U.S.-born parents. Parents framed charter school choice as a strategy to mitigate risk and protect their children's educational futures. [This article was presented at the 2021 meeting of the American Sociological Association.]

Attendance in kindergarten and elementary school robustly predicts student outcomes. Despite this well-documented association, there is little experimental research on how to reduce absenteeism in the early grades. This paper presents results from a randomized field experiment in 10 school districts evaluating the impact of a low-cost, parent-focused intervention on student attendance in grades K-5. The intervention targeted commonly held parental misbeliefs undervaluing the importance of regular K-5 attendance as well as the number of school days their child had missed. The intervention decreased chronic absenteeism by 15%. This study presents the first experimental evidence on how to improve student attendance in grades K-5 at scale and has implications for increasing parental involvement in education.

Using ethnographic techniques and formal interviews with 12 students, examined the racial messages and lessons students got from parents and teachers in one suburban elementary school community. Explicit color-blind "race talk" masked a reality of racialized practices and color-conscious understandings. Discusses this apparent paradox in the context of U.S. racial ideology. (SLD)

Examined the class formation procedures used in 22 elementary schools from two districts and the influence these procedures had on the composition of 200 classes, 56 of which were combination classes of students from two grade levels. Principals tended to assign higher ability and more independent students to combination classes to ease teacher burden. Contains approximately 80 references. (SLD)

Used qualitative data from two schools using the Success for All (SFA) program to examine how teachers responded to SFA and how their beliefs, experiences, and programmatic adaptations influenced implementation. Forty-seven interviews with teachers, principals, and SFA facilitators and 49 classroom observations showed that teachers fell into four distinct groups regarding SFA, from strong support to resistance. Discusses implications for program implementation. (SLD)

Examined the teaching of two Latina/o elementary school teachers and identified issues with the potential for improving the literacy instruction of Latina/o students. Findings indicate that infusion results in a balanced approach to literacy learning, that more extensive reform increases teacher rapport with students, and that teachers' identities influence their instructional approaches. (SLD)

The relationship between teaching as a knowledge endeavor and teaching as a moral enterprise is examined using episodes from elementary school teaching of social studies and mathematics as sites for the analysis. The analysis shows that concerns for the intellectual and the moral are ultimately inseparable. (SLD)

The cognitive and metacognitive knowledge of a proficient bilingual sixth-grade reader who was Latina was studied by comparing her reading processes with those of a marginally proficient bilingual reader and a proficient monolingual reader. Four key dimensions are identified that distinguish the proficient bilingual reader's performance. (SLD)

The article ''Transforming Educational Experiences in Low-Income Communities'' analyzes the efforts of a highly impoverished small elementary school to provide the kind of wrap-around services children in very poor communities need to give them a fair chance to succeed. For a child from a low-income family, what happens in the non-educational part of his or her life is often far more determinative than what happens in the classroom. In the absence of family resources and knowledge of the system, the school can become very important in connecting children to essential resources. As a faculty advisor to Harvard's Collaborative for Integrated School Services (1900-2003), Gary Orfield saw successful examples in various parts of the country. Full-service schools, however, never became a basic part of educational reform, though research shows that out-of-school conditions greatly impact school success. This article links the school's success to the social capital of the staff and a well-connected school principal but argues that efforts were limited by the tension between the Latinos who made up more than two-thirds of the school's enrollment and the African American and American Indian children and parents who often felt neglected. [This article offers a commentary of "Transforming Educational Experiences in Low-Income Communities: A Qualitative Case Study of Social Capital in a Full-Service Community School" (EJ1155359).]

To assess the effects of discussion on vocabulary learning, 38 children in two intact fifth-grade classes were divided into three subgroups and taught science vocabulary on three successive days. The discussion subgroup outperformed a non-discussion subgroup and a subgroup that anticipated involvement in discussion but was instructed without discussion. (TJH)

Elementary Boys' generosity toward peers following a success experience varied according to resulting positive and negative affects. Role of context of success relative to affective arousal and generosity were explored. Results indicated importance of considering the context of success and relevance of negative affects induced by a success experience. (Author/DWH)

The differential effects of computer-assisted instruction for high-achieving and low-achieving students were examined for seven elementary students of varied background. Higher-achieving students were more able to adjust to the requirements of computer work and to derive benefit from it than were lower-achieving students. Implications for teaching are discussed. (SLD)

Drawing on the evaluation and authority theories of Dornbusch and Scott, this paper examines the relationship between teacher perceptions of the frequency of evaluation activity and their assessments of their effort and effectiveness. Urban, middle school teachers were surveyed. Findings included a positive relationship between evaluation frequency and teacher leverage. (BS)

This paper applies a theory of growth in academic achievement to the study of the effects of ability grouping on reading achievement. The theory sees students' ability and effort determining how they utilize opportunities for learning provided by instruction. (Author/JAZ)

This paper presents linguistic evidence for communication problems in everyday classroom interactions where children are dialect speakers. It also examines the problem of coding language functions for use in experiments. (RB)

The lessons of 11 seventh-grade life science teachers were observed to determine the extent to which they made linkages between science content and its societal, reasoning, historical, or attitudinal implications. Results indicate a gap between scientific literacy as a normative goal of science instruction and current teaching practice. (TJH)

A model of skills needed by a student to understand a mathematics lesson taught by a good teacher is presented. The model contains a variety of cognitive competencies. Functioning of the model during a two-day lesson sequence is described. (TJH)

The article provides information on how to create a community of mathematical discourse within elementary and secondary classrooms. This paper also presents a reply from the paradox that students who assert that a teacher provides better help than an artificially intelligent computer-based tutor nonetheless prefer using the tutor to learning in a more traditional manner and appear to learn more while doing so. Many designers of mathematics courseware would take exception to the idea that extrinsic rewards humanize the interactions. To inject an extrinsic reward would be to dehumanize the student, to reduce the student to some kind of academic wageslave, to take away an important degree of autonomy.

The article presents a study which attempts to measure the curiosity of elementary school children. An investigation to find ways to measure the curiosity of elementary school children with paper-and-pencil instruments was carried out in three stages, involving three separate samples of fifth grade children. Children differing in level of curiosity were identified by teacher, peer, and self judgment. The influences of sex, popularity, and intelligence on these judgments were considered. Only intelligence was found to be significantly related to the judgments.

Expository writing is an important skill in the upper-elementary and secondary grades. Yet few studies have examined the effects of interventions designed to increase students' expository writing abilities and their ability to generalize their knowledge to write expository texts using novel text structures. The present study examined the effects of an intervention that attempted to improve students' expository writing abilities through an instructional emphasis on teacher and student dialogues about expository writing strategies, text structure processes, and self-regulated learning. The findings suggested that the dialogic instruction was effective (a) in promoting students' expository writing abilities on two text structures taught during the intervention (explanation and comparison/contrast,) and (b) in leading to improved abilities on a near transfer activity, in which students wrote using a text structure not taught during the intervention. Although students in the control group exhibited some pretest-posttest gains on specific text structures, they were not successful in using their knowledge to write about student-selected topics and text structures. The results support the importance of instruction that makes the writing processes and strategies visible to students through teacher-student and student-student dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structured naturalistic observations, representing about 1,400 hours of classroom behavior, and student surveys were analyzed to determine: (a) the extent to which small group instruction was used in elementary school classrooms, (b) the academic conditions under which small group instruction was used, and (c) the effects of small group instruction on student attitudes and perceptions, particularly those related to gender stereotypes. In 29 fourth and fifth grade classrooms 23,590 observation records were collected; approximately 11% of the records indicated the use of instructional small groups. of which 8% were mixed-sex groups. Small groups were observed more often in physical education and reading classes and less often in art classes. The use of small groups was not related to gender stereotypes regarding student competence but was negatively related to more general gender stereotypes held by female students. Attitudes toward cross-sex cooperation were negatively related to cooperative groupings for both male and female students, although cross-sex peer ratings by females were positively related to cooperative groupings. Perceptions of oneself as a problem solver were positively associated with cooperative groupings for male students only. The results are discussed in relationship to the characterization of sex as a status characteristic influencing the dynamics of group interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) issued public ratings of teacher education programs. We provide the first empirical examination of NCTQ ratings, beginning with a descriptive overview of the ratings and how they evolved from 2013–2016. We also report on results from an information experiment built around the initial ratings release. In the experiment we provided targeted information about specific programmatic changes that would improve the rating for a randomly selected sample of elementary teacher education programs. Average program ratings improved between 2013 and 2016, but we find no evidence that the information intervention increased program responsiveness to NCTQ's rating effort. In fact, treated programs had lower ratings than the control group in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student turnover has many negative consequences for students and schools, and the high mobility rates of disadvantaged students may exacerbate inequality. Scholars have advised schools to reduce mobility by building and improving relationships with and among families, but such efforts are rarely tested rigorously. A cluster-randomized field experiment in 52 predominantly Hispanic elementary schools in San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, tested whether student mobility in early elementary school was reduced through Families and Schools Together (FAST), an intervention that builds social capital among families, children, and schools. FAST failed to reduce mobility overall but substantially reduced the mobility of Black students, who were especially likely to change schools. Improved relationships among families help explain this finding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The reciprocal internal/external frame of reference model (RI/EM) combines the internal/external frame of reference model and the reciprocal effects model. The RI/EM predicts positive effects of mathematics and verbal achievement and academic self-concepts (ASC) on subsequent mathematics and verbal achievements and ASCs within domains and negative effects of mathematics and verbal achievements and ASCs on subsequent achievements and ASCs across domains. Although ample support was provided for the I/E model by cross-sectional data and for the REM within a single domain, there has been almost no research on the longitudinal generalizability of the reciprocal cross-domain effects. Using three waves of data collection from Grade 5 to Grade 8 with N = 1,508 students, analyses supported the validity of the RI/EM, revealing positive longitudinal effects of grades and ASCs on subsequent grades and ASCs within domains and negative effects of grades on subsequent ASCs across domains. There were also small negative effects of ASCs on subsequent grades across domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional environment of America’s schools has changed substantially as government regulation has focused increasingly on the core technical work of schools—instruction. The authors explore the school administrative response to this changing environment, describing how government regulation becomes embodied in the formal structure of four schools. Working at coupling government regulation with classroom teaching, school leaders transformed the formal structure, paying particular attention to designing new organizational routines. Analyzing the performance of these routines, the authors show how both government regulation and the technical core featured prominently, if selectively, and explore how routines enabled coupling by promoting standardization through alignment with common standards, by monitoring teacher and student performance, and by making aspects of instruction transparent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors report insights, based on annual site visits to elementary and middle schools in three states from 2004 to 2006, into the incentive effect of the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement that increasing percentages of students make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in every public school. They develop a framework, drawing on the physics concept of an attractor basin, to relate to theoretical literatures in economics and psychology the experiences that teachers, principals, and parents are having with the law. The authors anticipate—and find evidence of—very different incentive effects of the AYP requirements on schools of different initial achievement levels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Working from a core perspective on the developmental implications of economic disadvantage, this study attempted to identify family-based mechanisms of economic effects on early learning and their potential school-based remedies. Multilevel analysis of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort revealed that the accumulation of markers of economic disadvantage reduced math and reading testing gains across the primary grades. Such disparities were partially mediated by corresponding differences in children's socioemotional problems, parenting stress, and parents' human capital investments. These patterns appeared to be robust to observed and unobserved confounds. Various teacher qualifications and classroom practices were assessed as moderators of these family mediators, revealing teacher experience in grade level as a fairly consistent buffer against family-based risks for reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This nonexperimental, longitudinal field study examines the extent to which variation in observed classroom supports (quality of emotional and instructional interactions and amount of exposure to literacy and math activities) predicts trajectories of achievement in reading and math from 54 months to fifth grade. Growth mixture modeling detected two latent classes of readers: fast readers whose skills developed rapidly and leveled off, and a typical group for which reading growth was somewhat less rapid. Only one latent class was identified for math achievement. For reading, there were small positive associations between observed emotional quality of teacher-child interactions and growth. Growth in math achievement showed small positive relations with observed emotional interactions and exposure to math activities. There was a significant interaction between quality and quantity of instruction for reading such that at higher levels of emotional quality there was less of a negative association between amount of literacy exposure and reading growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the authors explore the implementation of a statewide class-size reduction program in nine high-poverty schools. Through qualitative methods, they examined how schools used class-size reduction to change staffing patterns and instructional programs. Requiring changes in space allocation, class-size reduction was accomplished through attention to pupil:teacher ratio, with classes ranging from 15:1 to 30.2 team taught. Most partner classes used tag-team teaching, with one teacher leading and the other doing clerical work. Working without specific professional development to enhance teaching in smaller classes, it made sense that teachers continued to solo practice. Class-size reduction is both a programmatic and instructional reform, and as such, it requires specific professional development to promote change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This quasi-experimental study compared the effects of morphemic and contextual analysis instruction (MC) with the effects of textbook vocabulary instruction (TV) that was integrated into social studies textbook lessons. The participants were 157 students in eight fifth-grade classrooms. The results indicated that (a) TV students were more successful at learning textbook vocabulary (b) MC students new more successful at inferring the meanings of novel affixed words; (c) MC students were more successful at inferring the meanings of morphologically and contextually decipherable words on a delayed test but not on an immediate test; and (d) the groups did not differ on a comprehension measure or a social studies learning measure. The results were interpreted as support for teaching specific vocabulary and morphemic analysis, with some evidence for the efficacy of teaching contextual analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on parental networks—a central dimension of social capital—this article uses ethnographic data to examine social-class differences in the relations between families and schools. We detail the characteristics of networks across different classes and then explore the ways that networks come into play when parents are confronted by problematic school situations. The middle-class pa rents in our study tended to react collectively, in contrast to working-class and poor parents. The middle-class parents were also uniquely able to draw on contacts with professionals to mobilize the information, expertise, or authority needed to contest the judgments of school officials. We did not find substantial race differences. We affirm the importance of a resource-centered conception of social capital that grants the issue of inequality a predominant place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the class formation procedures used in 22 elementary schools from two districts, as well as the influence these procedures had on the class composition of 200 classes, 56 of which were combination classes (classes with students from two grade levels). Principals were interviewed about their procedures for assigning students to classes, and students completed pretest measures. The major finding was that principals, in an effort to ease the burden that combination classes placed on teachers, assigned higher ability and more independent students to these classes a strategy that raised the ability level of combination classes but lowered it in adjacent single-grade classes. This study suggests that it may be profitable to conceptualize both elementary and secondary school student assignment procedures as the same mechanism, a mechanism that creates particular K-12 curricular paths for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to investigate elementary children's understanding of historical time, we conducted open-ended interviews with 58 children from kindergarten through sixth grade. In order to overcome the limitations of previous research in this area, we asked children to place pictures from various periods of American history in order and to talk about their reasoning. We found that even the youngest children made some basic distinctions in historical time and that those became increasingly differentiated with age. Dates, however, had little meaning for children before third grade, and, although third and fourth graders understood the numerical basis of dates, only by fifth grade did students extensively connect particular dates with specific background knowledge. At all ages, children `s placement of most pictures revealed substantial agreement with one another and with the correct order; this agreement indicates a significant body of understanding of historical chronology. History instruction in the elementary grades, then, might productively focus on helping students refine and extend the knowledge they have gained about history; information which relies on dates, however, is unlikely to activate their temporal understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the relationship between teaching as a knowledge endeavor and teaching as a moral enterprise, using episodes from our own elementary school teaching as sites for our analysis. One episode concerns the teaching of social studies, the second the teaching of mathematics. We first describe the episodes themselves, highlighting the ways in which they shed light on issues of pedagogical content knowledge and reasoning. We then revisit each episode with a different lens: that of teaching as moral work. Our framework consists of two essential components: concerns for subject matter and for students. This analysis is meant to be neither a complete delineation of teaching as a moral enterprise nor an exhaustive analysis of pedagogical content knowledge. It is meant to show that, in teaching, concerns for the intellectual and the moral are ultimately inseparable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have the established institutional forms of schooling been so stable and why did most challenges fade or become marginalized? We approach these questions by probing a few case studies of reform, some that lasted to become part of the grammar of schooling and some that did not We begin by exploring the origins of two enduring institutional forms, the graded school and the Carnegie unit. Next we analyze the history of three transient attacks on the grammar of schooling: the Dalton Plan, the Eight-Year Study, and the new model flexible high school of the 1960s. In each case political and institutional perspectives inform our interpretations. Finally, we reflect on what :be case studies suggest about the nature of institutional continuity and change and offer some policy implications for reform today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggregate data on grade-retention rates in 1st through 12th grades, from 12 American states for the year 1979–80, and 11 for 1985–86, were examined for across-grade patterns. The results were as follows: (a) The pattern of the rate magnitude distribution in the first six grades strongly suggests a negative growth exponential function as the target population of potential retainees is ‘depleted‘ across the grades; (b) the retention rate magnitudes show a pronounced tendency to peak at the beginning of each level of schooling ;(elementary, middle or junior high, high school; (c) shifts in the magnitude of the peaks following the change front a junior high to a middle school configuration support the preceding finding; and (d) both logically and empirically, a rather simple mathematical model fits the patterns quite well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a longitudinal research project on learning to teach literacy and as a personal quest to make her work as a teacher educator more supportive, this researcher arranged an ongoing conversation for members of three cohorts of preservice and beginning elementary teachers. The conversation was prompted by an interest in beginning teachers' critical responses to the personal support for learning to teach that they receive from their teacher education programs. From the social, collaborative, and nonevaluative conversations, personally and contextually relevant issues in learning to teach emerged, as did the processes of identifying and understanding them. The result was not only a clarification of important relational and political issues that seem prerequisite to issues of academic learning, but also the emergence of a feminist consciousness—in both teachers and researcher. The method of studying the group's learning then, became an example of feminist praxis: a willingness to risk and examine personal experiences as women and to be changed by The research process itself. The value of tins conversational approach for learning to teach in urban settings becomes clear in the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a 4-year longitudinal case study of changes in the teaching of reading and writing that were made by an elementary school teacher. The case study documents changes in her teaching beliefs and practices, and the influence of reflective thinking and collaboration promoted by a master's program and research project. Atypical forms of writing are used in order to reflect the perspectives of both the teacher and the researcher and to represent the historical phases of their collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Math and social studies differ in the usual instructional pattern found in elementary classrooms, in the goals sought, and of course in the actual content. Based on documented differences in the two fields, we expected pupils to bold different ideas about how to learn each subject and to express different reasons for positive and negative experiences in each subject. Sixty fifth grade pupils from 11 classrooms were interviewed to explore their attitudes and conceptions about learning math and social studies. The interviews included pupils' definitions of each school subject, descriptions of typical classroom activities, probes regarding how each subject was actually learned, and descriptions of times liked and disliked in each subject. Students' conceptions and attitudes regarding math and social studies were different. Consistent with expectations, pupils characterized positive and negative experiences in math in regard to their success or ability to do the work while social studies experiences were evaluated more in terms of whether they were interesting or boring. Among other differences, more students thought they could learn social studies on their own than math. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purposes of this investigation were to (a) describe teachers' styles of textbook use and (a) examine the overlap between content taught and textbook content in elementary school mathematics. Using daily teacher logs and a three-dimensional classification system as guides, trained raters generated detailed classifications of all problems presented in books and all content presented to students over the course of an entire school year. The results of analyses of overlap between textbook content and content taught challenge the popular notion that elementary school teachers' content decisions are dictated by the mathematics text hooky they use. In each classroom studied, there were important differences between the curriculum of the text and teachers' topic selection, content emphasis, and sequence of instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' goal orientations were assessed by means of tape-recorded, 3-hour interviews. Content analysis of interview transcription replicated earlier findings indicating that elementary teachers place an inordinately high priority on affective concerns. A cluster analysis revealed three distinct goal orientations on the part of teachers. The largest group was identified as those expressing a predominantly affective orientation. A second group was predominantly cognitive in orientation, and the third group expressed a mixed, affective and cognitive orientation. The discussion focuses on teachers' responses to individual interview items and the consistency of their responses, particularly as it relates to teachers' professed goals and educational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of membership in the same ability group on student friendships. We argue that assignment to the same instructional group increases opportunities for student interaction, underscores student similarities, and produces new similarities, and that these factors foster friendship. The relationship between grouping and friendship is examined in a longitudinal data set containing information on students in 110 reading groups in 32 classrooms of fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. The results show that the density of best friend choices within ability groups increases over time, the overlap between ability groups and cliques increases over time, and membership in the same ability group has a positive effect on the probability that a student will choose a peer as best friend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ubiquity of oral and written questions in classrooms and reading tasks has been well established. It is obvious that students' background knowledge is a primary determinant of how well they can answer comprehension-promoting or assessment-oriented questions. Less obvious is the need to access appropriate sources of information used in answering questions. A training study was conducted with 59 sixth grade students of high, average, and low reading ability levels, instructing half of students in each ability level in the relationship of a question, she text to which the question refers, and the reader's knowledge base. Repeated measures multivariate analyses of variance on two passages indicate that the training enhanced students' understanding of task demands of questions and their answer quality as measured by (a) their ability to correctly identify the question-answer relationship represented, (b) their consistency in providing an answer from the source of information they had indicated they were using, and (c) the quality of their answers. The training appeared to be most facilitative for those of average and lower ability levels, consistent with similar findings in other studies that trained cognitive skills. Knowledge of Sources of information may be fundamental to students' ability to access appropriate information for answering comprehensive questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared nonverbal behaviors associated with classroom con versa! ion in fifth and sixth grade classes in Mississippi choctaw Indian and predominantly white, middle-class public schools. Eleven class sessions, organized using a switchboard participation structure, were videotaped to provide comparative data on a variety of nonverbal behaviors a. e., student utterances, turn-switching pauses, listener-gaze, butting-in interrupt ions, individual as opposed to choral speaking, and teacher utterances and switching pauses). Two cameras recorded the data. One camera provided a view of the teacher and the class, and the second camera provided the listener-gaze of individual students. choctaw students spoke individually less often (p < .01), used shorter utterances (p < .01), interrupted the teacher more often (p < .01), and, while the teacher was talking gazed more at peers (p < .05) than their Anglo counterparts. Teachers in the choctaw classrooms had longer turn-switching pauses (p < .05), asked more questions (p < .01), and used shorter utterances to ask questions of individual students (p < .01). The results supported the hypothesis that cultural differences in nonverbal behavior are associated with classroom interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intent of the study was to examine the effectiveness of elements of the thematic-fantasy play training paradigm in facilitating children's immediate and maintained story recall. One-hundred and ninety-two children in kindergarten and first grade (balanced for sex) were randomly assigned to one of four groups: adult-directed play, peer-directed play, accommodation questions, or control. Children were read different books on three occasions and exposed to their appropriate treatments after each reading. After the third session, story recall was measured by a 10-item CRT, a story recall task, and a sequential memory task. Maintenance effects were measured 1 week later on the first two measures. Results generally indicated that adult tuition was not an important element for players. In terms of immediate recall, fantasy reenactment was generally more effective than were accommodation questions. For maintained recall, accommodation questions were generally as effective as the play conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The causal effects of time spent in learning (TSL) and time needed for learning (TTL) on reading and spelling achievement, as measured by standardized achievement, criterion test accuracy and retention, and teacher rating were investigated. The subjects were 171 fourth and fifth grade students. TTL was evaluated as the number of trials needed to master a learning or spelling task to 100% criterion. TSL was evaluated using the same procedure, except that children self-determined the number of trials they spent on an alternate task for each skill area. Within the mode/proposed, TTL contributed significantly to achievement, and its direct effect was greater than that of TSL. The data were also analyzed in terms of Carroll's (1963) model of learning. Results supported this mode! in which degree of learning is postulated to be a function of the ratio of TSL to TTL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The priority attached to inner city student desegregation has often become diminished with the onset of mandatory faculty desegregation. Consequently, students tend to be substantially more segregated than teachers in urban schools. Moreover, faculties in predominately minority schools typically have higher turnover and less experience than faculties in other schools. In the largest district initially placed under court-ordered faculty desegregation, we examined how these circumstances may have influenced academic attainment among elementary students. Achievement among black students was negatively related to the extent to which their teachers were racially isolated. Also, achievement was lower for black students assigned teachers who were involuntarily transferred for faculty desegregation purposes. The achievement of black, Hispanic, and white students was positively associated with teaching experience and negatively related to faculty turnover. These findings suggest that poorly planned desegregation policies can have undesirable consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results from recent classroom-based experiments suggest that teacher behavior can be modified and student achievement improved through minimal interventions where (a) teacher training is carried out in correspondence course fashion and (b) comprehensive classroom observations are not conducted. This experiment represents such an intervention, carried out in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms of 32 volunteer teachers. The experimental group teachers received through the mail a series of teacher training packets containing recommendations for teaching practices derived from the results of four large-scale correlational studies of teaching. Before and after training, classroom observations were conducted for 2 hours on two occasions. Analyses indicated that the intervention did not effect significant change in training-related leaching practices or end-of-year student achievement. Discussion of these results addresses factors that probably mediate treatment implementation and, consequently, effects on student achievement in research of this kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have assessed either the development of expectations or the motivational fund ion of expectations, and often have at- tempted to relate their findings to the other half of the expectation- performance relations/zip. This study was designed to investigate simultaneously the development of and the motivational function of expectations. Fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students studied a word learning task and were tested on 3 consecutive days. Expectancy statements were made by half the subjects. Results concerning the development of expectations seemingly contradict previous research, but the contradiction was explained in terms of complexity of the task. Expectations were found to be motivational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]