ALLOCATION OF ITEMS AND EXAMINEES IN ESTIMATING A NORM DISTRIBUTION BY ITEM-SAMPLING

A norm distribution consisting of test scores received by 810 college students on a 150 item dichotomously-scored 4-alternative multiple-choice test was empirically estimated through several item-examinee sampling procedures. The post mortum item-sampling investigation was specifically designed to manipulate systematically the variables of number of subtests, number of items per subtest, and number of examinees responding to each subtest. Defining one observation as the score received by one examinee on one item, the results suggest that as the number of observations increases beyond 1.23% of the data base all procedures produce stochastically equivalent results. The results of this investigation indicate that, in estimating a norm distribution by item-sampling, the variable of importance is not the item-sampling procedure per se but is instead the number of observations obtained by the procedure. It should be noted, however, that in this investigation the test score norm distribution was approximately symmetrical and the possibility should not be overlooked that item-sampling as a procedure may be robust only for symmetrical norm distributions.     

Effects of Counselor Supervision on Group Counseling: Client's Perceived Outcomes

Two hundred and fifty Neighborhood Youth Corps participants experienced group counseling over a 10-week period. Approximately half of the groups were conducted by five counselors who were supervised by a practicum instructor, and the remainder of the groups were led by unsupervised counselors. The participants in the supervised counseling groups were more positive toward their experiences than were those in the unsupervised counseling groups. The need for continuing supervisions or consultation of counselors is emphasized.     

Confidence in Mathematics and its Consequences: Gender differences among Israeli Jewish and Arab youth

Gender differences in mathematics learning in the high school serve as a basis for achievement in mathematical disciplines in higher education, as well as in social mobility in Western society. The main findings reported here are that, in the Jewish sector in Israel, even when the level of mathematics is held constant, so that the perceived degree of achievement in mathematics of boys and girls is similar, girls are nevertheless found to report a lower degree of self-confidence in mathematics than boys on a number of different measures. Paradoxically, the educational system in the Arab sector, despite its gender conservatism relative to the general Jewish sector, has succeeded in generating amongst its female students a high degree of perceived achievement and self-confidence in mathematics, which in turn increases their willingness to consider mathematically-based studies and professions in the future.     

Communication and Persuasion in a Didactic Exhibition: The Power of Maps Study

This article describes a study of The Power of Maps, an exhibition presented in 1992 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York City. The study compared the result of surveys administered to visitors at the Cooper-Hewitt as they entered and exited the exhibition with a control group of surveys administered to visitors at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, who had not seen The Power of Maps exhibition. It was found that visitors who were surveyed as they entered the exhibition were closer in agreement with the message of the exhibition than the control group. It was also found that visitors surveyed upon exiting The Power of Maps exhibition were in closer agreement with the message of the exhibition than with visitors who were surveyed as they entered the exhibition. The study demonstrates that it is possible to document a change in visitors' conceptions about a topic as a result of hearing about or visiting an exhibition and reliably determine the degree to which exhibitions can influence visitors.     

On the (Re)presentation of Educational Research Through the Medium of the Creative Arts

The paper seeks to unpick and examine a number of related claims for the role of the arts or, more specifically, the creative arts, in educational research. It considers and evaluates ways in which artistic creativity might itself be thought of as either based on research or itself a form of inquiry which might claim to be research. Such claims are entirely plausible, though they perhaps force artistic creativity into a particular mould that not all artists would appreciate. Artistic work may also constitute data conveying information about a particular setting or the events from which they were produced, signs and symbols for the observer or researcher to interpret. The claim that art might be used to represent educational practice, policy or experience receives the fullest treatment, and this requires consideration of both the general claim (which runs counter to the ambitions of many artists, choreographers and musicians) and more particular claims for, for example research-based narrative fiction, which is treated somewhat sceptically.     

The New School

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post‐revolutionary 19^th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self‐initiation and self‐organisation; that are multi‐sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning.     

In Byzantium1

During Spring 1997 we experimented with a research method combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to documenting visitor experiences in The Glory of Byzantium, a special exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to using standard demographic and behavior surveys, a small team of researchers and volunteers gathered information, compared experiences, and summarized their observations of people in the exhibition. Each team member conducted about a dozen structured conversations with visitors as they left the exhibition. Subsequently the team met as an informal focus group to describe their experiences. We found that many museum users arrived with relevant experiences and high expectations for this somewhat specialized exhibition; we also found users whose approach to the exhibition was less well‐informed, but whose enthusiasm and trust for the museum experience moved them to attend with satisfaction. We believe that such team approaches to research might well be used as a regular part of museum work as we search for answers to the many elusive questions about museum use.