Ethnic and regional influences on teachers' evaluations of oral answers

Tape recordings were made of six white and six black ninth-grade northern boys speaking identically worded answers to typical school questions. Black students were given significantly higher grades than white students by 56 white and 50 black southern teachers. Black teachers gave significantly higher grades than white teachers, but no significant interaction was found between students' and teachers' ethnic group. The study is a partial replication of a previous study in which it was found that black students were given significantly lower grades than white students by northern white teachers.     

Teaching general science through film production

Conclusion Differences in achievement under the two methods in the acquisition of information and in the ability to apply information to novel situations were in favor of the film-presentation method, and were large enough to be significant at the 2 and 5 percent levels of confidence respectively. Therefore, under the conditions of this experiment, joint pupil-teacher film production was not as effective in producing achievement in the learning outcomes measured as the film-presentation method. As regards retention of learning, the experimenter concluded that neither method was superior. It was also found that the film-production method was more costly, and that most pupils preferred it even though they did not always feel that they learned the most science by that method. How effective is the use of student film production for the teaching of content in a subject matter area? This study shows the superiority of conventional film presentation techniques over such joint pupil-teacher film production. Carlton W. H. Erickson is director of the audio-visual center and associate professor of education at the University of Connecticut. The article is based on a doctoral dissertation at the Boston University School of Education, entitled, “The Effectiveness of Joint Pupil-Teacher Motion Picture Production as a Method of Teaching General Science.”