Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Beliefs,Coping Strategies,and Academic Performance: An Evaluation of Theoretical Models

Research has identified factors associated with academic success by evaluating relations among psychological and academic variables, although few studies have examined theoretical models to understand the complex links. This study used structural equation modeling to investigate whether the relation between test anxiety and final course grades was mediated by personal control, self-efficacy, goal orientation, coping strategies, and self-regulation. Participants were 297 undergraduate students taking an algebra course designed for engineering students. Results indicated that the proposed theoretical model was supported by the data, although a modified model produced a better fit. Other competing models were also tested. Collectively, analyses revealed that the psychological variables played important roles in predicting students’ grades, as all the structural coefficients and R ² statistics were statistically and practically significant. Findings suggest value in the development and testing of additional models that contribute to the expansion of intervention programs to enhance academic outcomes among students.     

Relationships between Teachers’ Views on Education and their Socio-Economic Attitudes

Twenty preschool children identified as in the poverty group by OEO standards were compared with twenty preschool children from upper middle class families, as judged by father’s occupation, as to the extent and nature of their ability to recognize their own photographs from five other unidentified photographs on each of a series of six different views. Statistical analysis supported the hypothesis that preschool lower class children cannot recognize themselves from photographs as well as preschool middle class children (P = . 005). Although some views were significantly more recognizable by both groups of children (P = .01), sex and’’time to respond" differences were not significant.     

Comparing Class- and Task-Level Measures of Achievement Goals

Models of achievement goals suggest that different tasks and contexts influence the goals students adopt at a given time. However, many studies of achievement goals rely on measures assessed at the class level, analyze results with a variable-centered approach, and employ self-report questionnaires, which may reduce understanding of the contextual factors that arise as students interact with tasks. We compared a behavioral, task-level measure of middle school students' achievement goals to a self-reported, class-level measure and analyzed both measures' relations to task performance and quarterly grades using both variable-centered and person-centered approaches. Task-level goals predicted task performance but not quarterly grades, while class-level goals predicted grades but not task performance. The two measures of achievement goals were not related. This work demonstrates the importance of measuring goals at multiple levels and suggests opportunities for changing students' behaviors and achievement through motivation at the task level.     

Cleansing the Superdome: The Paradox of Purity and Post-Katrina Guilt

The reopening of the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina on Monday Night Football dramatized problematic rhetorical, visual, and spatial norms of purification rituals bound up in what Burke calls the paradox of purity. Hurricane Katrina was significant as a visually traumatic event in large part because it signified the ghetto as a rarely discussed remainder of American structural racism and pressed the filthiest visual and territorial residues of marginalized poverty into the national consciousness. In this essay, we argue that a visual paradox of purification—that purifying discourses must “be of the same symbolic substance” as the polluted images that goad them—complicated ritual attempts to both purge and commemorate Katrina evacuees. It is within the paradox of purity that visually grounded purification rituals like the Superdome reopening should be considered for their potential to invite or foreclose public engagement with race and class problems firmly entrenched in Americans’ perceptions of pollution and public territory.     

The Cultural Politics of Progenic Auschwitz Tattoos: 157622, A-15510, 4559, …

Facing the loss of the last generation of Holocaust survivors, progeny of survivors have begun to tattoo their ancestors’ Auschwitz numbers on their own bodies. We investigate the rhetoricity of progenic tattooing through semiotic, affective, and pedagogical registers. We argue that shifting conditions of discourse across time alter decorum about public memory of the Holocaust. Further, the progenic practice, constituting a distinct form of trauma tattoo, enacts a mode of postmemory through a resignification of the original sign that makes visible the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust.     

Past Endeavors and Future Perspectives for Sport Management Research

While the bulk of research in sport management would primarily stem from masters' and doctoral studies, quality research by sport management scholars is now published regularly in some of the best journals the profession can offer. This research is original and exclusive to the field, however, its findings are not systematically organized. There is a need to put in order what we know and what we don't know about managing sport. This paper presents two inductive analyses of sport management research topics, one for doctoral dissertations and the other for published conference abstracts and journal articles. In an attempt to stimulate discussion about the need to map out completed research in this field and systematically organize findings, the paper also proposes a conceptual model of relevant relationships that can be explored in sport management research.     

Book reviews

Psychology of the Junior High‐School Pupil. By L. A. Peckstein (University of Cincinnati) and A. Laura McGregor (Rochester, N. Y., Public Schools). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924. Pp. xxii + 280. Price, $2.

Modern Methods in Teaching. By H. B. Wilson, George C. Kyte, and H. G. Lull. New York: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1924. Pp. vi + 286. Price, $1.64.

Elementary School Costs in the State of New York. By R. O. Stoops. A report reviewed and presented by the Educational Finance Inquiry Commission under the auspices of the American Council on Education, Washington, D. C. New York: Macmillan Co., 1924.

The Cost and Support of Secondary Schools in the State of New York. By Charles W. Hunt. A report reviewed and presented by the Educational Finance Inquiry Commission under the auspices of the American Council on Education, Washington, D. C. New York: Macmillan Co., 1924.

Interesting Neighbors. By Oliver P. Jenkins. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Sons & Co., 1922. Pp. xi + 248.

The Humanizing of Knowledge. By J. H. Robinson. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923. Pp. ix + 117. Price, $1.50.

Education of Gifted Children. By Lula M. Stedman (University of California, Southern Branch). Yonkers‐on‐Hudson: World Book Co., 1924. Pp. viii+ 192. Price, $1.80.     

Students’ approaches to learning in problem-based learning: Taking into account professional behavior in the tutorial groups,self-study time,and different assessment aspects

Problem-based learning (PBL) represents a major development in higher educational practice and is believed to promote deep learning in students. However, empirical findings on the promotion of deep learning in PBL remain unclear. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationships between students’ approaches to learning (SAL) and academic achievement in a PBL environment, taking into account the role of self-study time and students’ professional behavior in the PBL tutorial groups. In addition, different knowledge categories that determine achievement (i.e., understanding of concepts, understanding of the principles that link concepts, and the linking of concepts and principles to conditions and procedures for application) were taken into account. A hypothesized structural equation model including these variables was tested. Results showed that the PBL students in this study reported more use of a surface compared to a deep approach to learning. The hypothesized model demonstrated an excellent fit of the model with the data. The relationship between SAL and academic achievement was mediated by self-study time and professional behavior. These findings imply that self-study time and professional behavior are crucial variables to take into account when studying SAL.     

Nuevas perspectivas metodológicas para el estudio del habla egocéntrica

Resumen

Las hipótesis de Vygotski sobre el papel del habla egocéntrica en la regulación de las acciones representa uno de los temas de mayor interés para los estudiosos del binomio pensamiento-lenguaje. Para abrir nuevas vías al análisis de este campo del lenguaje es necesario reflexionar sobre una serie de cuestiones fundamentales, sin las cuales el sentido de estas hipótesis se desvirtúa. Estas quedan reflejadas en los siguientes puntos: a) definición vygotskiana de habla egocéntrica (indiferentiatión entre el habla para los demás y el habla para uno mismo); b) requisitos conversacionales elicitadores de este tipo de habla, los cuales evidencian su origen social (i. e., incremento del número de emisiones egocéntircas cuando el niño actúa en compañía de otros niños); y por último, c) el papel del contexto extralingüistico (i. e., objetos físicos sobre los que se actúa). Dada la gran dependencia del discurso infantil de la situación concreta, el contexto extralingüístico es analizado como un requisito conversational más, responsable del mantenimiento de la conversación (habla social) y del habla egocéntrica asociada a ésta. Finalmente, la revisión de estas cuestiones invita a desarrollar una perspectiva dialógica de análisis a partir de las nociones de diálogo, habla interna y emisión de Bajtin. La perspectiva dialógica permitirá analizar las emisiones de carácter egocéntrico en el contexto lingüístico y/o conversacional en que emergen.