This longitudinal study identified degrees of playfulness in 278 kindergarten-aged children, and followed them through their next three school years to determine how playfulness was viewed by the children themselves, their classmates, and teachers. Perceptions of the social competence, disruptiveness, and labeling as the class clown, were assessed from all perspectives in each of first through ...

BACKGROUND Research suggests that referral practices of teachers in regular education are not only affected by the level of learning difficulties but also by student behaviour and the level of students' parental involvement in education. It was hypothesized that teachers maintain a notion of the 'ideal' student, who has relatively good academic skills, is well behaved and has highly involved pa...

This study compared middle and high school teachers’ perceptions toward existing classroom observation practices. Teachers’ attitudes regarding classroom observation practices were analyzed on four dimensions: instructional improvement, purpose, professional trust, and reflective thinking. The participants were from five school districts in Long Island, New York. A survey instrument that includ...

Pre-service teachers responded to two questionnaires exploring perceptions of school violence. Responses to the “Teachers’ Attitudes about Bullying” and “Trainee Teachers’ Bullying Attitudes” questionnaires suggest that teachers across all academic divisions view bullying as a serious concern with implications for their role within the profession. There were considerable differences regarding w...

A study of a learning management system (LMS) used by two secondary school teachers to deliver a unit of work to middle-school students was conducted to examine the planning and development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) and determine the LMS’s effect on pedagogy. Data was elicited via observation of the teachers’ planning sessions, interviews and a survey rating teachers’ perceptions ...

In order to reach the main aims of modern education, powerful learning environments are designed. The characteristics of the design of PLEs are expected to have positive effects on student learning. Additionally, teachers' conceptions of learning and teaching do influence the implementation of a PLE. Moreover, students' perceptions of a learning environment affect their subsequent learning beha...

Large-scale environmental epidemiologic studies often rely on exposure estimates based on linkage to residential addresses. This approach, however, is limited by the lack of residential histories typically available for study participants. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility of using address data from LexisNexis (a division of RELX, Inc., Dayton, Ohio), a commercially available credit...

OBJECTIVE To develop a theory that explains the process of how teachers' perception of multilevel policies may influence nutrition education (NE) teaching strategies in Head Start preschools. DESIGN Semistructured telephone interviews. SETTING North Carolina Head Start preschools. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-two Head Start teachers. PHENOMENON OF INTEREST All interviews were transcribed verbati...

While claims of the importance of attribution theory and teachers' expectations of students for student performance are repeatedly made, there is little comprehensive research identifying the perceptions preservice teachers have of students with learning disabilities (LD). Accordingly, 444 Australian preservice primary school teachers were surveyed using vignettes and Likert-scale questions, to...

Teachers’ perceptions of school climate in 59 elementary schools were assessed using a modified version of the School-Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ). Using structural equation modelling, a statistically significant, positive relationship was found between school mean teachers’ perceptions of school climate and school mean student achievement. A second model showed that school and commun...