Thirty Schools Tell Their Story,adventure in American Education,Volume V. Harper and Brothers,New York, 1943. $4.00. 802 pp

Communication: Communication, the Miracle of Shared Living by Dora V. Smith. The Macmillan Company. 105 pp. $2.50.

Education: Administration In Profile For School Executives by Harlan L. Hagman and Alfred Schwartz. Harper &; Brothers. 308 pp. $3.50.

Basal Reading Instruction by Gerald A. Yoakam. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 357 pp. $4.50.

Social Studies: A Half Century of International Problems by F. R. Coudert, Columbia University Press, 352 pp., $4.00.

Approaches to an Understanding of World Affairs. Howard R. Anderson, editor. The National Council for the Social Studies, 1954. 478 pp. $3.50 paper, $4.00 cloth.

Teaching World Understanding, edited by Ralph G. Preston. Prentice-Hall, 207 pp. $3.95.

Travel: Around India by John Seymour. John Day Company, 310 pp. $4.95.

Dependent Baggage—Destination Geamany by Marie Di Mario Warm. The Macmillan Company, New York, N.Y. 245 pp. $3.50.     

An Experimental Study of Two Plans of Supervised Study in First Year Algebra

Two assumptions are used in this investigation: (1) It is assumed that visual-discrimination ability is more closely related to reading achievement than is visual-motor ability. (2) It is assumed that visual-motor-memory ability is more closely related to reading achievement than is visual-motor-copying ability. One hundred and sixty-five students in the upper elementary grades were given a battery of form perception and reading achievement tests. Pearson’s product-moment correlation and Hotelling’s t test were used in the analysis of the data. The results strongly inferred that visual-form-discrimination ability is more closely related to reading achievement than is either visual-motor-copying ability or visual-motor-memory ability. No basis has been found for inferring that visual-motor-memory ability is more closely related to reading achievement of students than is visual-motor-copying ability.     

An Experimental Evaluation of a Modified Morrison Procedure in Teaching American History

This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of extensive pre-guidance, periodic checking, and detailed correction and comment on specific preliminary steps in the development of the documented research paper, written by freshman English students, according to their grade achievement. Also included was a cross-check analysis of written essays, prepared and impromptu. The study involved the research papers of forty-eight students enrolled in two classes. One group received detailed guidance, the other did not. An evaluation chart, developed by the instructor and another rater, was used on all papers; a systematic sampling of 19 percent of these was graded by the second rater. The inter-rater reliability coefficient (Pearson r) was established as .96.

The hypothesis-there will be no significant difference in the grade achievement of separate sections of second semester freshman English students on the research paper according to different instructional procedures-was not rejected. The conclusion was drawn that, within the limited scope of this study, the described methods were not validated by the classroom instructor as a means of improving the performance of students on the research paper.     

Self-managing groups and the professional lives of teachers: A case study

The purpose of the study was to examine how interdisciplinary teaching teams were used in a newly opened Midwestern middle school to produce a work environment different from the one found in most traditionally organized schools. Five salient features of the work environment are described: organization around interdisciplinary teams, shared leadership, focus on children, the influence of the principal, and integrated programming for children. The article includes an analysis of how interdisciplinary teaching teams at this school affected some traditionally problematic aspects of teachers' work. Interdisciplinary teams are discussed as one illustration of self-managing work groups in school organizations.An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 7, 1988.