Users as service innovators: The case of banking services

Many services can be self-provided. An individual user or a user firm can, for example, choose to do its own accounting - choose to self-provide that service - instead of hiring an accounting firm to provide it. Since users can ‘serve themselves’ in many cases, it is reasonable to suspect that they can also innovate with respect to the services they self-provide - possibly without the assistance of service providers.In this paper, we conduct the first quantitative exploration of the importance of services innovation by users, focusing on the field of commercial and retail banking services. We find that 55% of today's computerized commercial banking services were first developed and implemented by non-bank firms for their own use, and 44% of today's computerized retail banking services were first developed and implemented by individual service users rather than by commercial financial service providers. Manual precursors to these services - manual procedures that carried out functions similar to computerized services in our sample - were almost always developed by users as self-services.Our empirical findings differ significantly from prevalent producer-centered views of service development. We speculate that the patterns we have observed in banking with respect to the major role of users in service development will prove to be quite general. If so, this will be an important matter: on the order of 75% of GDP in advanced economies today is derived from services. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in service development.     

Relational victimization: The association between recalled adolescent social experiences and emotional adjustment in early adulthood

Although the relationship between relational victimization and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence has been established, it is unknown whether it extends into early adulthood. The current retrospective study investigated the relationship between recall of adolescent relational victimization and symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and loneliness in 205 undergraduate students. The effects of gender and perceived social support on these relationships were assessed, as were the psychometric qualities of the Relational Victimization Questionnaire (RVQ). Recalled adolescent relational victimization was related to increased symptoms of depression and social anxiety; neither gender nor perceived social support affected the strength of these relationships. Results indicated that the RVQ has adequate internal consistency and a single factor structure. Implications for psychologists working with adolescents are highlighted. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Effects of participation in a martial arts–based antibullying program in elementary schools

This study evaluated the Gentle Warrior Program, a traditional martial arts–based intervention to reduce aggression in children, as it was implemented in three elementary schools. The sample consisted of 254 children in grades 3, 4, and 5 who participated in the Gentle Warrior Program as part of a larger school violence intervention. Results indicated that boys who participated in more Gentle Warrior sessions reported a lower frequency of aggression and greater frequency of helpful bystanding (i.e., helpful behavior toward victims of bullying) over time, relative to boys with less frequent participation. The effect of participation on aggression was partially mediated by empathy. The effect of participation on helpful bystanding was fully mediated by changes in student empathy. No significant results were found for girls. Results of the study provide preliminary support for the use of martial arts–based interventions to address bullying in schools for boys, by teaching empathy, self‐control, and peaceful strategies to resolve conflicts. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Changes in self-reported academic cheating across the transition from middle school to high school

Changes in early adolescents' self-reported cheating behaviors in mathematics before and after the transition from middle school to high school are examined. Students were surveyed in school regarding their cheating behaviors in math, and the motivational goal structures perceived in their math classrooms. Surveys were completed twice during the eighth grade (during middle school) and once at the end of the ninth grade (at the end of the first year in high school). Results indicated that self-reported cheating did not change in the year prior to the high school transition, but that reported cheating increased after the transition. Additional analyses indicated that across the high school transition, self-reported cheating in math increased for students who moved from high mastery to low mastery-oriented classes after the transition, and for students who moved from low performance to high performance-oriented classes; in contrast, self-reported cheating decreased for students who moved from low to high mastery-oriented math classrooms.     

Constructing views of science tied to issues of equity and diversity: A study of beginning science teachers

In this study, we examined the discursive and social practices of a teacher educator (the first author) and her eight beginning science teachers in a course on the nature of science and issues of equity and diversity. We focused our investigation on beginning science teachers' views of science and science teaching, as well as the grounds they offered for their views. We organized our discussion of the nature of science, teacher learning, and grounds for views along three dimensions: personal, social, and political. We found that beginning teachers routinely drew from only one of these three dimensions to support their views of the nature of science and ways to represent science to all students. In our implications, we recommend that teacher educators encourage teacher learners to examine personal, social, and political grounds carefully and critically in the process of constructing or revising their views. We argue that attention to these three dimensions of grounds for views will assist beginning teachers in adopting nature of science positions that are broad and complex, that more clearly reflect the goals of equity and excellence, and thus, that hold greater promise for achieving a science education inclusive of all students. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 53–76, 2003     

A Two-Year Longitudinal Study of Stressful Life Events, Social Support, and Social Problem-Solving Skills: Contributions to Children''s Behavioral and Academic Adjustment

We investigated the contributions of stressful life events and resources (social support and social problem-solving skills) to predicting changes in children's adjustment. At Time 1, 361 third through fifth graders completed measures of social support and social problem-solving skills. Their parents completed a stressful life events scale and a child behavior rating measure. The children's teachers provided ratings of behavioral and academic adjustment. 2-year follow-up data (Time 2) were obtained for approximately half of the sample on the same measures. Time 1 stressful life events and resources showed some significant but modest zero-order correlations with the Time 2 adjustment indices. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed prospective effects for Time 1 social support on later teacher-rated competencies and grade-point average. In addition, increases over time in social support and social problem-solving skills (a composite score) were significantly related to improvement in behavioral and academic adjustment, whereas stressful life events were not predictive of adjustment.     

Do Principals Affect Student Outcomes: An Organizational Perspective

This research study investigated the principal's role as instructional manager, its relationship to student achievement, and how principals influence teachers to accomplish the school's goal of increasing student learning. Conceptually, principal instructional management includes those processes, both mental and physical, that the principal uses which result in other people executing formal and informal duties to achieve organizational goals. It deals mainly with planning, organizing and controlling teacher behavior to achieve organizational goals, but also includes monitoring and controlling resources. Subjects for the study included elementary school (K‐8) principals and teachers in 27 schools. Student achievement gain was determined by regression analysis where current achievement was regressed on prior achievement and SES for two years of data. Principal instructional management behavior was measured by a modified form of the Instructional Management Rating Scales, or IMRS (Hallinger, 1983). The results from the study question whether principals should be led by researchers and policymakers into thinking that increasing their instructional management behaviors will turn ineffective schools into effective ones. School improvement is a complex process that involves a host of factors which principals can influence, but not control. While principals play an important role as part of the schools' efforts in school improvement, the role of the principal in school improvement, must be placed in its proper perspective.     

Constructing a Pragmatic Science of Learning and Instruction with Functional Contextualism

Constructivism has been embraced by many in the field of instructional design and technology (IDT), but its advocates have struggled to move beyond theory to practice or to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach. As an alternative to constructivism, a new perspective emerging in psychology, known as functional contextualism, is presented. Like constructivism, functional contextualism also rejects objectivist epistemology, but provides a much more coherent philosophical basis on which to build an empirical science of learning and instruction. The philosophical worldview known as contextualism is reviewed to outline the similarities and differences between constructivism and functional contextualism, and the key characteristics of functional contextualism and the science it supports, behavior analysis, are described. Implications of functional contextualism for research and practice in IDT are then explored. Eric Fox [eric.fox@wmich.edu] is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University. This article was written while he was a doctoral student in the Learning & Instructional Technology program at Arizona State University.     

Motivational climates: assessing and testing how science classroom environments contribute to undergraduates’ self-determined and achievement-based science goals

The current research examined the psychometric properties and utility of a measure of college classroom environment in predicting goal-related outcomes rooted in goal contents and achievement goal theories. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in Studies 1 and 2, respectively, yielded support for two distinct and gender-invariant classroom environment constructs—professorial concern and affiliation. Results of multilevel regression analyses in Study 3 indicated that both constructs were positive predictors of intrinsic and self-approach goals. Additionally, professorial concern was a significant positive predictor of extrinsic goal adoption. Contrary to expectation, perceptions of affiliation in the science classroom were unrelated to task-approach goals. These findings illustrate the important role that socially dynamic classroom contexts play in fostering motivation and satisfying basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.