How students socially evaluate interest: Peer responsiveness influences evaluation and maintenance of interest

Social influences (e.g., by teachers, parents and peers) on students’ experience of interest are typically described in terms of affecting students’ initial choice of and/or completion of specific educational activities. When considered within the framework of the Self-Regulation of Motivation (SRM) model, however, other people may influence the interest experience even after activity completion, by influencing how a person evaluates that past experience. Previous experimental research showed that when students talked about a game upon completion, listeners’ responsiveness influenced their evaluation of interest. The present research examined whether peer responsiveness when undergraduates talked about topics covered in actual classes predicted students’ evaluation of class interest. In Study 1, we examined responsiveness in the context of conversations that took place as a structured part of an online psychology class (i.e., discussion board), and found that the frequency of replies from classmates to students’ posts (but not the reverse) predicted students’ interest in the class measured at the end of the semester. In Study 2, we examined responsiveness in the context of students’ reported everyday conversations about two completed interesting class topics or two completed class exams in an introductory physics course. Perceived listener responsiveness in conversations about class topics (but not about exams) predicted students’ concurrent evaluation of class interest, even when controlling for anticipated interest at the beginning of the semester. Moreover, listeners indirectly affected interest measured at the end of the semester via their influence on interest during the semester.     

Watchdog journalism: India's three largest English-language newspapers and the Right to Information Act

India's Right to Information Act (RTIA) has been described as one of the strongest laws in the world for access to public information. The preamble spells out its promise to expose government corruption. Given that the Indian news media is the largest in the world and has a storied history of unearthing public corruption, this exploratory study employed the normative theory of the monitorial role of the news media to examine the extent that the RTIA was used to uncover government corruption. This content analysis examined a census of 221 articles published in India's three largest English-language newspapers in the period after the RTIA was adopted in October 2005 and then five years later. Slightly more than 80% of the articles referencing corruption fell into four thematic categories: progress on implementing the law, public education about the legislation, the watchdog role of activists and other non-journalists, and a brief mention of the RTIA. During this period the English-language dailies reported their own use of the RTIA to expose corruption in 2% of the articles.     

Analysis of Print Purchase on Demand Titles Ordered via Interlibrary Loan: A Collection Development Perspective

This article examines data from five years of titles ordered as part of an academic research library's purchase on demand program (POD-ILL) for print titles originally requested through interlibrary loan. The study evaluates a variety of factors: patron departments, campus location, and status; the subject areas of the books acquired; cost; and publishers. Assessment of POD-ILL data may assist a collection management librarian to determine the value of having patrons contribute to collection development decisions. In addition, subject librarians can use the data to evaluate approval and demand-driven acquisition profiles.     

Analyzing Quasi-Experiments

There is a large body of literature devoted to critiquing the adequacies of various approaches to analyzing data from quasi-experiments. It has slowly become clear that any discussion of approaches to analysis of quasiexperiments is incomplete unless certain assumptions are made about data resulting from growth in the absence of treatment effects. One popular assumption, and for which there exists appropriate analyses, is the fan spread hypothesis. The utility of the fan spread hypothesis for educational data is explored through relationships to a large class of continuous growth models. It is shown that the fan spread hypothesis is both more and less restrictive than past literature would suggest. Implications for data analysis are also discussed.     

The Effects of Special Curricular Study of Mexican Culture on Anglo and Mexican-American Students’ Perceptions of Mexican-Americans

Anglo and Mexican-American students in six sixth-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to control or experimental conditions (four weeks of special curricular study of Mexican culture). The effect of the treatment on perceptions of MexicanAmericans was studied by having students respond anonymously to an attitude inventory. The posttest means were significantly lower than the pretest means for all groups, apparently as a consequence of greater honesty in responding. There were significant differences in the ethnic group means, but no sex difference. The length and intensity of the treatment were not sufficient to cause changes in the ethnic attitudes and stereotypes.     

Tallebudgera: A First Experience in Environmental Education

Abstract

The environment as an issue has been prominently before the public for almost two decades. Yet the question of how much the public knows about their environment or about environmental issues has seldom been considered in the research literature. Using data from a statewide survey, this paper examines the general level of public environmental knowledge and analyzes the sociodemographic characteristics correlated with such knowledge. The results indicate that public environmental knowledge remains painfully low, and that the major correlates of environmental knowledge are education, income, and sex. The need for the development of environmental knowledge scales that can be applied across a variety of research is discussed.     

DIF Testing With an Empirical-Histogram Approximation of the Latent Density for Each Group

This research introduces, illustrates, and tests a variation of IRT-LR-DIF, called EH-DIF-2, in which the latent density for each group is estimated simultaneously with the item parameters as an empirical histogram (EH). IRT-LR-DIF is used to evaluate the degree to which items have different measurement properties for one group of people versus another, irrespective of mean differences on the construct. Usually, the latent distribution is presumed normal for both groups, but results are biased if this assumption is violated. Simulations show that if the latent densities are nonnormal, Type I error and estimates of the item parameters and focal-group mean and SD are more accurate using EH-DIF-2 than standard methods. Free software for carrying out EH-DIF-2 is available on request.     

Knowledge, writing, and language outcomes for a reading comprehension and writing intervention

Many students struggle with gaining knowledge and writing about content text material and therefore require effective intervention. In a randomized controlled trial study, 77 low-achieving fourth-grade students received reading comprehension instruction or reading comprehension plus writing instruction or were assigned to a no-treatment control. Knowledge outcomes were evaluated through students’ retelling and performance on a standardized reading test. Written language-based outcomes were analyzed using a computer software program for semantic and syntactic measures. Analyses indicated that students in reading comprehension instruction and reading comprehension plus writing instruction outperformed the control group on oral and written retelling, a standardized reading test, and semantic measures. Syntactic measures, however, did not show statistically significant differences by treatment or control group. Implications for including language instruction and assessments within multi-component instruction are suggested.