The continual need for improvement to avoid derailment: a study of college and university administrators

Understanding what relates to the behaviours associated with derailment (i.e. failure or burnout in managerial positions) may prevent costly outcomes of derailment for the manager, co‐workers and the organization. The outcomes of derailment are especially pertinent with those working in college and university administration as many, including faculty, other staff and students, depend on these administrators. Data collected about 173 middle‐ and top‐level college and university administrators from 88 different colleges and universities across the USA revealed that self‐ and observer‐ratings (peers and direct reports) of willingness to improve negatively related to boss ratings of derailment. Specifically, the more administrators were willing to improve (and the more others believed those administrators were willing to improve), the less likely it was that bosses believed those administrators displayed the characteristics and behaviours associated with derailment. We conclude with a discussion of our findings including guidance for college and university administrators.     

An examination of the use of audiovisual media in reducing prejudice

This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of audiovisual media as an instructional technique for altering ethnic attitudes among young children. Subjects were 153 children between the ages of five and nine, randomly assigned to one of three groups: Group 1 (Control), Group 2 (subjects viewed one film) or Group 3 (subjects viewed two films). The findings indicated that Group 2 and Group 3 gave significantly fewer prejudiced responses than Group 1 (p < .01). Furthermore, demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, or ethnicity of subject and tester) did not affect the ability of the treatment to modify attitudes. Both the implications and the limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Equity and Excellence in Research Funding

The tension between equity and excellence is fundamental in science policy. This tension might appear to be resolved through the use of merit-based evaluation as a criterion for research funding. This is not the case. Merit-based decision making alone is insufficient because of inequality aversion, a fundamental tendency of people to avoid extremely unequal distributions. The distribution of performance in science is extremely unequal, and no decision maker with the power to establish a distribution of public money would dare to match the level of inequality in research performance. We argue that decision makers who increase concentration of resources because they accept that research resources should be distributed according to merit probably implement less inequality than would be justified by differences in research performance. Here we show that the consequences are likely to be suppression of incentives for the very best scientists. The consequences for the performance of a national research system may be substantial. Decision makers are unaware of the issue, as they operate with distributional assumptions of normality that guide our everyday intuitions.     

Using the history of calculus to teach calculus

An historical approach to the teaching of calculus provides the students with a better understanding of the material than the standard approach and helps as well to introduce them to the relationship between mathematics and other aspects of our culture. In this article, I describe in some detail a course in calculus which is based on such an approach.     

Phonology constrains the internal orthographic representation

Four experiments explored the composition and stability of internalorthographic representations of printed words. In three experiments,subjects were presented on successive occasions with words that wereconsistently spelled correctly or were consistently misspelled. On thesecond presentation, subjects were more likely to judge both kinds ofwords as correctly spelled than on the first presentation, suggesting thattheir preexperimental orthographic representations had been altered tomatch what they had seen on the first presentation. However, onlymisspellings that were consistent with the correct phonology wereaccepted; spellings that altered the phonology were rarely accepted,suggesting that some parts of the orthographic representation are lessstable than others. Also, subjects' reliance on orthographic vs.phonological memory when judging a word's spelling was affected by thekinds of other misspellings in the list. Lists that contained somephonologically implausible spellings for real words (e.g., *assostance)induced subjects to rely more on phonological plausibility when judgingthe correctness of other words in the list and less on orthographic memory.An individual grapheme in an internal orthographic representation wasunstable when there were many phonologically acceptable alternatives forit. The results are contrary to the view that the strength of an internalrepresentation is uniform across all its graphemes and is a function only ofvisual experience with the printed form. Results were interpreted in thecontext of a theory that considers spelling knowledge to be a by-productof the reading process, a process that involves phonological analysis.     

Experiential Learning in Social Science Theory: An investigation of the relationship between student enjoyment and learning

This paper provides an analysis of student experiences of an approach to teaching theory that integrates the teaching of theory and data analysis. The argument that supports this approach is that theory is most effectively taught by using empirical data in order to generate and test propositions and hypotheses, thereby emphasising the dialectic relationship between theory and data through experiential learning. Bachelor of Commerce students in two second-year substantive organisational theory subjects were introduced to this method of learning at a large, multi-campus Australian university. In this paper, we present a model that posits a relationship between students' perceptions of their learning, the enjoyment of the experience and expected future outcomes. The results of our evaluation reveal that a majority of students: ’ enjoyed this way of learning; ’ believed that the exercise assisted their learning of substantive theory, computing applications and the nature of survey data; and ’ felt that what they have learned could be applied elsewhere. We argue that this approach presents the potential to improve the way theory is taught by integrating theory, theory testing and theory development; moving away from teaching theory and analysis in discrete subjects; and, introducing iterative experiences in substantive subjects.     

Psychosocial adjustment in adolescent child molesters

This study compared adolescent child molesters (n = 31) with nonsex offending delinquents (n = 34) and normal adolescents (n = 71) on standardized measures of social competence and psychological adjustment. The measures included the Adolescent Assertiveness Scale, the Survey of Heterosocial Interactions, the Self-Consciousness Scale, the Social Anxiety and Distress Scale, the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Norwicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale, and the Jesness Inventory. Results were consistent with predictions. Molesters showed significantly more global maladjustment than normals and were more socially anxious and threatened by heterosocial interactions than nonsex offending delinquents. A discriminant function analysis suggested that molesters, more than delinquents, were likely to perceive themselves as socially inadequate and to be externally oriented in their attributional style. Results support the hypothesis that social skill deficits and social isolation are risk factors that may predispose some adolescents to commit sexual crimes against children.     

Implementation of the Mason,DeMers & Middleton consultation and program evaluation model in an Israeli school integration project

A project designed to foster integration between middle and upper-middle socioeconomic status students on the one hand and lower SES students in need of special educational attention and enrichment on the other was initiated at the Gush Etzion Regional Elementary School in Israel. Two school counsellors were invited to serve as consultants to and evaluators of the project. The counsellors decided to adopt the consultation and program evaluation model suggested by Mason, DeMers & Middleton (1984) as a basis for their work. A qualitative analysis of the consultation and program evaluation indicates that the model employed facilitated an effective and efficient contribution by the counsellors to the success of the integration project, especially regarding the advancement of the lower SES population both educationally and socially.