The problem with which this study was concerned is the political influence of community/junior college chief executive officers (CEOs) and campus presidents on the state legislature, both directly and indirectly, in the funding of community colleges in Texas. Perceptions of effectiveness were recorded by survey from campus presidents and CEOs as well as from legislators and key legislators. In addition, interviews were conducted with several key legislators and the chief administrators of the two statewide community college organizations. The purpose of the study was to analyze the policy-making process in Texas of which community/junior colleges are a part. The influential relationships and interactions of the sixty-five CEOs and campus presidents of the public community college districts and campuses in Texas were analyzed after a survey instrument was administered. Perceptions of rank—and—file legislators were gathered through use of another survey instrument and perceptions of key legislators were gathered in the same manner but with the addition of a personal interview. Certain questions were asked of them concerning interactions and communication with leaders of community colleges. With the legislators and the presidents certain demographic data was collected and analyzed as a part of the study. Among the findings, campus presidents and CEOs …

This study provides a rationale for adopting course materials. It demonstrates the relationship between ability to read assigned materials and academic achievement, and that selection of materials creates two groups having different probabilities of success. The sample was selected from a population of all students enrolled in Principles of Economics courses at North Texas State University in the spring semester of 1986. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used to determine reading ability. Assigned materials were analyzed for readability. A frustration level was determined and used to divide the sample: the group of interest, those with reading abilities below the frustration level who underwent the treatment of reading materials written above their ability to comprehend; and the comparison group, those with reading abilities above the frustration level who did not undergo the treatment.

The problem of the study was to determine the implications for the collegiate secretarial curriculum based on the need for and use of shorthand by secretaries employed by large businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The purposes of the study were to determine if colleges are justified in offering manual shorthand within their curriculum with the rapid growth of automation in the business world today. It was also the purpose of the study to determine if there was a demand for secretaries with the skill of manual shorthand in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Shorthand was found to be important for recording telephone messages, notes, and instructions, as indicated by the majority of the secretaries.

It was the purpose of this research, to develop and test an artificially intelligent, learner-based, computer-assisted physics tutor. The resulting expert system is named ARPHY, an acronym for ARtificially intelligent PHYsics tutor. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase of the research, the system was constructed using Ausubel's advance organizer as a guiding learning theory. The content of accelerated motion was encoded into this organizer after sub-classification according to the learning types identified by Gagnds. The measurement of the student's level of learning was accomplished through the development of questioning strategies based upon Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. The second phase of this research consisted of the testing of ARPHY. Volunteers from four levels of first-semester physics classes at North Texas State University were instructed that their goal was to solve three complex physics problems related to accelerated motion. The only students initially instructed by ARPHY were from the class of physics majors. When the threshold values of the pedagogical parameters stabilized, indicating the fact that ARPHY's instructional technique had adapted to the class' learning style, students from other classes were tutored. Nine of the ten students correctly solved the three problems after being tutored for …

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is the ascertainment of the attitudes of members of the Texas film industry toward the film curriculum offered in Texas institutions of higher learning. Based on the findings the following conclusions have been reached. There is not a high regard overall for film-studies programs in Texas institutions of higher learning within the film industry. This may be overcome by an interaction of the professional film community as an active participant in curriculum planning and development. Of prime consideration should be an association of film schools coordinating programs in cooperation with the Texas Film Commission. An effective curriculum for film-studies education may be organized by utilization of learning modules. This plan would organize the learning experiences in a functional manner and would move toward involvement of a career nature.

The problem of this study was to ascertain (a) the teaching practices of medical-surgical nursing teachers in the clinical laboratory of baccalaureate nursing schools in the State of Texas, and (b) some variables possibly associated with these practices.

The problem of this study was to ascertain the status of Texas secondary school industrial arts programs in regard to serving physically handicapped students and to analyze the attitudes of industrial arts teachers toward the physically handicapped students in industrial arts classes. The purposes of this study were, (1) to describe the nature and extent of participation by industrial arts programs in Texas secondary schools in complying with federal and state laws concerning the education of handicapped children, and (2) to acquire and interpret information which may be included in college courses for preparing industrial arts teachers and/or in-service programs for industrial arts teachers. Among the major findings revealed by an analysis of the data are the following. 1. Of the 366 industrial arts teachers surveyed, 86 per cent had no pre-service courses and 79 per cent had no in-service instruction concerning handicapped students; however, 67 per cent had experience teaching physically handicapped students. 2. Of the 37,659 students who were served by 355 industrial arts teachers during the 1977-78 school year, 727, or 2 per cent, were physically handicapped; 171 students were in separate special classes and 566 were integrated into regular classes. 3. Of the 727 physically handicapped …

The problem of this study was to standardize the Basic Movement Performance Profile with male and female profoundly retarded residents from the ten Texas state schools for the mentally retarded. To standardize the Basic Movement Performance Profile, the following objectives were formulated: 1. To determine if the test items found in the Basic Movement Performance Profile were valid and appropriate items to measure the basic movement skills of profoundly retarded residents of state institutions. 2. To establish the reliability of the Basic Movement Performance Profile test items utilizing the test-retest method with thirty profoundly retarded males and thirty profoundly retarded females at the Denton State School for the Mentally Retarded. 3. To establish performance level norms utilizing percentile ranks for both sexes on the Basic Movement Performance Profile.

This study constructs a curriculum guide to supplement the half-unit elective in Texas high school psychology. The guide is designed to provide a basic course structure to assist the secondary-level psychology teacher. Material already in existence in high school psychology was determined from The Educational Index, Psychological Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts, and the Education Research Information Center. The Texas Education Agency provided guidelines for teaching secondary psychology and all other state-level information on high school psychology. The American Psychological Association furnished information about their work in secondary psychology, and the fifty state departments of education provided other state-level information. Further, a survey was conducted of the 111 high school psychology teachers in the 85 schools in the State of Texas which offer secondary-level psychology courses. An equal number of counselors within these same schools was also surveyed, as well as an expert panel of six judges. Points of emphasis in high school psychology textbooks were determined from the tables of contents in the eight such texts voluntarily used in the state. Relatively little published information provides guidelines for a high school psychology curriculum. The survey of the fifty state departments of education produced no statewide curriculum guides. The survey of teachers, …

This investigation compares the effectiveness of two methods of teaching production work in beginning typewriting. One method is defined as the traditional approach, which adheres to suggestions and materials for teaching found in current typewriting textbooks. Students are paced, drilled, and timed on straight copy to build speed and accuracy, but not on production work; they usually type from perfectly arranged copy; and they circle their errors for at least half the course. The other method, developed at North Texas State University by Payne and Anderson, is defined as the teacher-directed approach. Students are intensively paced, drilled, and timed by the teacher on short, simple jobs or parts of jobs; they usually type from unarranged copy; they learn to erase errors on production work during the first production unit; and they are evaluated on the basis of the number of mailable items produced during a specific time period.

The study was conducted to investigate the result of three differential seating arrangements in college classrooms on anxiety level, acquaintance volume, and perceived social distance among students.

The purpose of the study is to find answers to the following questions. 1. Is there a significant difference in any of the three simple pair-wise comparisons of the attitudes of the three groups of mathematics instructors of college preparatory courses toward teaching those courses? 2. Is there a significant difference in any of the three simple pair-wise comparisons of the attitudes of the three groups of mathematics instructors of college preparatory courses toward the MAA-NCTM recommendations? 3. Is there a significant correlation between the attitudes toward the MAA-NCTM recommendations and the attitudes toward teaching the college preparatory mathematics courses held by the mathematics instructors in each of the three groups? The data led to the conclusion that all three groups held the same favorable attitude toward teaching college preparatory mathematics courses. Also, there were no significant differences among the three groups' attitudes toward the MAA-NCTM recommendations. However, while no significant correlation was found for the high school instructors, there did exist a significant positive correlation between the two attitudes for each of the other two groups studied.

The problem of this study was the investigation of burn-out in child protective services social workers. The purposes of the study were to 1. Estimate certain causes and symptoms of burn-out; 2. Determine certain characteristics of the individual child protective services social workers; 3. Develop profiles of the burned-out and the burning-out workers; 4. Develop profiles for the items on the characteristics instruments which the computation of the data indicates might be important for selecting, training, and managing workers.

The purposes of this study were to examine the oral communication skills considered important to specific companies, identify the objectives emphasized in the business and professional communication courses in Texas colleges and universities, ascertain how much course time is spent in various areas, and determine the communication needs of business and industry and the degree to which the communication departments of Texas colleges and universities are meeting those needs.