End-of-course and long-term retention outcomes for mastery and nonmastery learning paradigms

Using both end-of-course achievement outcomes and long-term cognitive retention as criteria, the present study provides comparative data on the effectiveness of a mastery and nonmastery approach to instruction. Differential effects across taxonomic levels were assessed for both criteria. The results indicated that mastery students performed significantly higher than non-mastery students for end-of-course outcomes at the highest taxonomic level and equally well for knowledge, comprehension, and application level outcomes. Retention differences were found for knowledge level outcomes only, with mastery students demonstrating significantly greater retention performance. The feasibility and desirability of implementing a learning for mastery paradigm in a single course at the college level are discussed relative to the magnitude of the present results.     

The training of school psychologists in the United States: An overview

A comprehensive study was undertaken to investigate the “state of the art” in the training of school psychologists. The data indicate that the rate of growth in the number of programs is increasing, especially at the sixth-year level. Data are presented on student and faculty demographics and characteristics. While evidence exists for the notion of program proliferation, the impact of such growth cannot be assessed without accurata data regarding present and future market demand.     

Increased reliability of an objective personality measure for children

The Missouri Children's Picture Series (MCPS) is explored as an assessment tool for boys in residential treatment. Extreme ease of administration is an attractive feature of the test. Boys in treatment usually have shown low test-retest reliability, in contrast to other populations. Higher, significant reliability was obtained in the present study by a split-deck procedure. It is suggested that the test is better administered to disturbed boys in two sittings, to offset their distractibility and short attention span. Under these conditions, the test can be applied to future work with this type of subject population.     

Determinants of historic and cultural landmark designation: why we preserve what we preserve

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This article builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow us to explain why some properties were designated landmarks (or landmark districts) and others were not. The results identify the influence of property characteristics, local socio-economic factors, and measures of historic and cultural quality. The results emphasize the political economy of implementing preservation policies.     

Age–price profiles for Canadian painters at auction

We conduct an empirical analysis of the effect on the auction price of a Canadian painting of the age of the painter at the time of creation of the painting. We consider over two hundred artists, active over the entire history of Canadian art, who are pooled in the estimation of a hedonic regression in which a polynomial function in age enters as a regressor along with several other control variables. We consider the possibility that the age–price relationship has changed over time by: (a) estimating separate age–price functions for three generational groups of artists—those born before 1880, between 1880 and 1920, and after 1920 and thus coming of age in the world of post-war ‘contemporary art’ and (b) estimating a parameterization where the shape of the age–price profile is permitted to change continuously depending on the year of birth of the artist. Our principal result is that artists born more recently tend to ‘peak’ earlier in their careers than those of previous generations.