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This study explored the question of how teacher collaboration programs impact the sense of trust and respect between cooperating professionals. Ten elementary school teachers constituting five collaborating dyads volunteered to participate in a three-phase clinical supervision cycle, including a pre-observation goal-setting conference, classroom observation data collection, and a post-observation data sharing and analysis conference. Participants completed this cycle at least four times throughout the school year, and evaluated the experience through semi-structured interviews. Results indicated that trust and respect between collaborators was a prerequisite to effective collaboration, and that without trust and respect collaboration was futile. Trust between teachers and administrators seemed to evolve more quickly when not initiated by the administrator, and the period of time required to develop trust among teachers appeared to be longer in cases where collaboration was mandated by school or district policy. Expertise in specific subject areas was not found to be prerequisite to establishment of trust. Common philosophical beliefs that were shared by those who established the most energetic and effective collaborative relationships included: a shared understanding that collaboration must be non-threatening evaluatively; mutual input in the process and ability to move in new directions as necessary; and seeing students as the focus of the collaboration and of education itself. (Contains 21 references and 2 interview schedules.) (PB)

The rapport among teachers can be a significant determinant of educational quality and workplace atmosphere. A practicum project sought to improve professional communication among staff at an urban, public elementary school where teachers did not have opportunities to meaningfully interact with one another. The staff in this school consisted of a male principal, a female vice-principal, 35 teachers, 4 teaching assistants, 2 secretaries, and 2 custodians. The decision to host six preservice teacher candidates permitted an opportunity to solve the problem. Over the 8-month period, 3 types of teacher interactions were initiated: professional cooperation, "Tea and Tidbits," a professional circle to discuss classroom practice, and shared space partnership. In post-project asssessments, teachers reported an increased number of conversations. Insights into education due to conversations and planning with colleagues were not apparent. While teachers appeared to agree that staff modeled behavior they hoped children would emulate, a discrepancy was noted in the fieldnotes between what the teachers agreed on and what they did. Although the practicum met only one of four objectives, it demonstrated how experienced teachers and preservice teacher candidates could initiate collegiality. (Contains 48 references.) (MOK)

Discusses the importance of a mentoring program for community college faculty. Identifies characteristics of a good mentor, such as strong communication skills, and those of a good mentee, such as strong listening skills. Argues that a mentoring program is beneficial to the individuals involved, as well as to the community college. (Contains 19 references.) (NB)

Interpersonal sensitivity refers to the perception of the thoughts, feelings and reactions of another person with whom one is interacting. To examine the effects of sex and leader/subordinate role upon interpersonal sensitivity, female, male and mixed-sex dyads (N=72) were first observed in interaction and then asked to complete questionnaires. Data analyses showed that those in subordinate roles were more sensitive to the feelings of the other dyad member than those in leader roles. Subordinates were more sensitive to how the leader felt about them than to how the leaders felt about themselves and leaders were primarily sensitive to how the subordinates felt about themselves. While there was no main effect for sex, mixed-sex dyads were more sensitive than same-sex dyads, and females were more sensitive to males than to other females. The results suggest these interaction effects provide evidence that sensitivity is an interactive process, affected by the respective roles of the interactants. (WAS)

In every situation, many factors are involved in the choice of a particular form of address and there is usually more than one acceptable form. The setting for this study is the office of the director of a large business organization. The focus is a description of address forms used by a person holding the position of director of a committee, an ambiguous position in the organizational hierarchy. The particular factors that are significant here are status and intimacy. The ways that first names and nicknames are used within the committee office indicates that in that context, intimacy is a more important consideration in the choice of address forms than is status. A new compromise form of address, first name plus last name, was invented by the committee-director for use with the associate directors as a way of avoiding using either first name or title plus last name. Use of this particular address form is interpreted as a means of calling attention to the committee-director's ambiguous status as well as the low intimacy factor. (AMH)

Student teaching may be defined as a complex intermingling of roles and institutions. Few, however, would dispute that the core of student teaching is that unique relationship which occurs between two persons--the student teacher and the cooperating teacher. This relationship may be explored by examining two alternative models for matching student teachers and cooperating teachers. The first model aims at some predetermined change by arranging a match based on a specified degree of disparity between two persons whereas the second model suggests a match which seeks congruency in a relationship. Based upon these two models, the alternative of mutual-choice placement is recommended. In addition to providing the opportunity for model synthesis or selection, mutual-choice placement maximizes the decision making process for those persons most involved--the student teacher and the cooperating teacher. (Author)

This study presents a set of opinions on how to obtain rapport with and give preliminary counseling to individuals who have adopted distinct and different aging mannerisms. The nine mannerisms treated were abstracted from the studies of Neugarten and Reichard. The research sample was selected from the members of the Gerontological Society. Six forms of the final research instrument were created, each containing three of the nine behavioral mannerisms. Each mannerism appeared on two of the six forms. Combinations of any two stereotypes appeared only once in the six forms. The sample was asked to: (1) estimate the percentages of the elderly population that could be described by the three stereotypes, (2) recommend the best way to attain rapport with and resolve the problems of each group, and (3) suggest motivating appeals for making changes. Regardless of type of behavior senior citizens exhibited, there were three universal rules that the gerontologists laid down for the rapport and counseling process. (1) Individual people deserve individual attention. (2) Every person, irrespective of state of mind or background, must be treated with dignity and respect. (3) Listen, observe and empathize before making suggestions. Recommendations for each of the mannerisms are presented. (Author)

This study attempts to answer the following question: Do males and females differ in their reporting behavior to interviewers of contrasting status backgrounds, specifically psychiatric physicians and lay interviewers? Subjects were 200 adults. A 263-item instrument was utilized to measure functional psychological disorder. Interviews took place under three conditions; (1) a physician conducting the interview made his status known; (2) a physician conducting the interview did not make his status known; and (3) lay interviewers were used with their status known. Results indicate that women give the most information about their symptomatology to unidentified physicians, and report the least to identified doctors. Males tend to report more symptoms to identified physician interviewers. It is speculated that social training of the sexes might explain their contrasting performances. Women may be more responsive to interpersonal interaction, and therefore to the interviewing skill of the unidentified physicians. Men may be more responsive to interviewer status, and less to interpersonal skill; consequently, they report more to identified physicians. Also, women may feel threatened by the high status figure, being unaccustomed to lengthy interaction outside of evaluative contexts, and thus lack the trust necessary for self-disclosure in an interview. (Author/JLL)

This paper presents a meta-theoretical perspective for looking at change and stability in close personal relationships. The theoretical conception of interpesonal relationships is summarized in an intial section, emphasizing interpersonal influence in specific interactive sequences. Next, a five-phase conception of relationship development is outlined and described including (1) acquaintance with another person; (2) buildup of mutual relationship; (3) continuation or consolidation of the relationship; (4) deterioration or decline; and (5) ending, either voluntary or involuntary. This perspective on relationship development is applied to two of the phases, pair buildup and couple maintenance, including a discussion of several "filtering" models of courtship or mate selection. The role of children in changing relationships and role perceptions is considered and the model is summarized as a circular loop conception of close relationships influenced by personality and environment. A graphic presentation of the circular loop model is appended. (JAC)

The issue of negative bias against men in the female-dominated field of early childhood education is explored in three field studies focusing on the opinions of university students in education about male and female early childhood teachers and about selected teaching behaviors of men and women in this specialty. The first study investigated rapport between teachers and young children, comparing the rapport attributed to male teachers with that attributed to female teachers. A modified form of the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory (MTAI) was administered to 105 undergraduates enrolled in an educational psychology course at the University of Manitoba. The second study, involving further modification of the MTAI and 35 additional undergraduates, focused on opinions about male teachers only. Taken together, the first two studies suggested that future teachers attribute less rapport with children to male teachers of young children than to female teachers and that this effect is especially noticeable when respondents compare male and female teachers. A third study compared the teaching skill attributed to male and female teachers of young children in three different classroom situations. Results suggested that while male teachers are not expected to establish rapport as well as female teachers, this bias does not extend to evaluations of specific behaviors. (RH)

Prior research demonstrates that examiner unfamiliarity negatively affects the optimal performance of handicapped preschoolers. The present investigation sought to determine whether examiner unfamiliarity also interferes with the optimal performance of handicapped school-age pupils and nonhandicapped children. Sixty-four subjects (16 language-handicapped and 16 nonhandicapped preschoolers and 16 language-handicapped and 16 nonhandicapped school-age students) were tested twice during a period of 2 weeks, once by a familiar examiner and once by an unfamiliar examiner, within a crossover design. A significant interaction was obtained for examiner familiarity and handicapped status, indicating that whereas nonhandicapped subjects scored similarly when tested by familiar and unfamiliar examiners, handicapped children scored higher with the familiar tester. Thus, findings indicated that examiner unfamiliarity negatively affects both language-handicapped preschool and school-age children's performance relative to a normative population; it appears to depress selectively handicapped children's test performance, thereby indicating that an examiner's unfamiliarity constitutes a negatively, systematically biasing condition and threatens the validity of handicapped students' test performance. (Author)

Problems caused by a teacher's inherent authority during writing conferences can be surmounted by bringing a counselor's approaches to structuring and conducting an interview with a client. First, the creation of an atmosphere of acceptance and trust is more important to the writing conference than specific teaching techniques. Second, characteristics of effective helpers must be identified, including helper empathy, helper warmth and caring, and helper regard and respect, as well openness and honesty. The helping process can be divided into six stages: (1) preparing and beginning, (2) clarifying, (3) structuring, (4) exploring (5) consolidating, and (6) planning and terminating. Finally, counselors must develop skills for listening and understanding, such as paraphrasing, perception checking, direct and indirect leading, interpreting, and summarizing. By becoming more conscious of what is involved in a helping relationship, teachers can enhance their writing conference skills. (Copies of first drafts and transcripts of the subsequent conferences are included.) (DF)

One model of successful time-limited psychotherapy characterizes the therapy as a movement through three interactional stages: the early rapport attainment stage, the middle conflict stage, and the final resolution stage. According to this model, these stages are indicated by the relative presence of communicational harmony. To examine the validity of this model, a study was conducted in which therapist topic determination, defined as the proportion of therapist topic initiation responses that were subsequently followed by the client, was used to represent the degree of communicational harmony. It was hypothesized that successful time-limited therapy dyads would demonstrate a high-low-high sequence of therapist topic determination over the course of treatment while unsuccessful dyads would not. The degree of topic determination over the course of treatment was examined using a replicated N of 1 design for six time-limited psychotherapy dyads, one successful and one unsuccessful dyad from each of the three therapists at a university counseling center. The results indicated that each successful dyad evidenced the general high-low-high pattern of therapist topic determination, but also that there was a fair degree of variation among dyads with respect to the abruptness and speed of moving through the stages. None of the unsucessful dyads were found to have the hypothesized pattern of topic determination. Further research should examine whether this stage model would occur regardless of theoretical approach and whether the same pattern would hold for time-unlimited dyads. (Author/NB)

A study of the training of the in-company trainer of young people in Ireland was conducted from January through March 1988. Directors of training and the trainers themselves were interviewed in 15 companies. An additional 50 trainers responded to a mailed questionnaire. Trainers were primarily men in their thirties with a background in teaching, personnel work, or a technical area. The competencies trainers need were identified as follows: understanding of basic learning theory, a wide range of instructional techniques, analytical skills to identify the knowledge needed by the trainee and the skill content of the job, understanding of attitude development, program planning skills, record maintenance and monitoring skills, flexibility, and good rapport with trainees. Gaps between the competencies trainers possess and those they need were identified in all of these areas. The following trends were identified: the need for trainers to develop skills to a high degree; open learning for theoretical training combined with practical "hands on" training; need for a more competitive industrial spirit in Ireland, with training making a vital contribution; and the need for preparation of trainers for new technologies. (Four appendices provide a proposed training program for training managers, data tables, the learning cycle for training, and the questionnaire. A listing of seven definitions of words used in the report is included.) (CML)

Summarizes ways in which elementary school counselors may use puppets. Suggests that puppets are effective aids in counseling children, especially in establishing trust and rapport. States that practicality is the key to puppet selection and that counselors need no special skills to make effective use of puppets. (MKA)