An acquaintance rape education program for students transitioning to high school

Based on Parrot's work with college students, a six‐activity acquaintance rape prevention program for first‐year high school students living in a rural South Carolina community was implemented and evaluated. The program decreased students' acceptance of rape myths compared with non‐participating students both on a scale developed by Burt and on additional items measuring acquaintance rape. Attitudes toward dating violence did not change. Research limitations are discussed, and practical suggestions for sex education are presented.     

The influence of coping strategies on the manifestation of learned helplessness

Thirty learning-disabled and 30 normally achieving fourth-grade boys experienced failure on a problem-solving task, following which they received either tutor-assistance or self-instructional training to induce success in coping with failure, or a no-training condition. Training effects were assessed on a subsequent problem-solving task and a measure of continuing motivation. Tutor-assistance training was more effective than self-instructional training for decreasing the number of problems on which learning-disabled boys gave up prior to solution. Compared with their untrained controls, learning-disabled boys with tutor-assistance training gave up less often and solved more problems. Continuing motivation increased with learning-disabled boys who received tutor-assistance training and normally achieving boys without training. Untrained normal achievers attributed failure to adoption of specific task strategies, while untrained learning-disabled boys attributed failure to task difficulty. It was suggested that characteristics of learned helplessness were apparent in the impaired performance of the learning-disabled boys. Normal achievers appeared to have developed active and independent strategies for coping with failure.     

Detecting Item Drift in Large‐Scale Testing

The early detection of item drift is an important issue for frequently administered testing programs because items are reused over time. Unfortunately, operational data tend to be very sparse and do not lend themselves to frequent monitoring analyses, particularly for on‐demand testing. Building on existing residual analyses, the authors propose an item index that requires only moderate‐to‐small sample sizes to form data for time‐series analysis. Asymptotic results are presented to facilitate statistical significance tests. The authors show that the proposed index combined with time‐series techniques may be useful in detecting and predicting item drift. Most important, this index is related to a well‐known differential item functioning analysis so that a meaningful effect size can be proposed for item drift detection.     

Situated mathematics teaching within electrical engineering courses

The initial phase of undergraduate engineering degree programmes often comprises courses requiring mathematical expertise which in some cases clearly exceeds school mathematics, but will be imparted only later in mathematics courses. In this article, an approach addressing this challenge by way of example within a fundamentals of electrical engineering course is presented. The concept focuses on gaining specific mathematical knowledge and competencies in the technical context of this course. For this purpose, a complementary blended learning scenario centring around a web-based learning platform and involving an adaptation of the course was developed. The concept particularly considers the heterogeneity of today's student groups and is discussed with regard to related approaches, didactical considerations, and technical implementation. For the interventions, the results of a questionnaire-based evaluation proving students' acceptance and positive influence on examination performance are presented.     

Book reviews

International Review of Education -     

Teacher ratings of internal and external students in open and traditional class environments

Eleven open and 11 traditional school teachers rated the achievement and behavior of students in their third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes. On both measures, girls were rated higher than boys and internals higher than externals. Sex interacted with school environment, such that girls' achievement ratings exceeded those of boys only in open classes. A predicted locus of control by environment interaction was not found for either achievement or behavior rankings. The relationship of these results to those found in studies using standardized achievement test data, rather than teacher ratings, is discussed.     

Carbohydrate intake and training efficacy – a randomized cross-over study

Carbohydrate (CHO) availability during endurance exercise seems to attenuate exercise-induced perturbations of cellular homeostasis and might consequently diminish the stimulus for training adaptation. Therefore, a negative effect of CHO intake on endurance training efficacy seems plausible. This study aimed to test the influence of carbohydrate intake on the efficacy of an endurance training program on previously untrained healthy adults. A randomized cross-over trial (8-week wash-out period) was conducted in 23 men and women with two 8-week training periods (with vs. without intake of 50g glucose before each training bout). Training intervention consisted of 4x45 min running/walking sessions/week at 70% of heart rate reserve. Exhaustive, ramp-shaped exercise tests with gas exchange measurements were conducted before and after each training period. Outcome measures were maximum oxygen uptake (VO_2max) and ventilatory anaerobic threshold (VT). VO_2max and VT increased after training regardless of CHO intake (VO_2max: Non-CHO 2.6 ± 3.0 ml*min^?1*kg^?1 p = 0.004; CHO 1.4 ± 2.5 ml*min^?1*kg^?1 p = 0.049; VT: Non-CHO 4.2 ± 4.2 ml*min^?1*kg^?1 p < 0.001; CHO 3.0 ± 4.2 ml*min^?1*kg^?1 p = 0.003). The 95% confidence interval (CI) for the difference between conditions was between +0.1 and +2.1 ml*min^?1*kg^?1 for VO_2max and between ?1.2 and +3.1 for VT. It is concluded that carbohydrate intake could potentially impair the efficacy of an endurance training program.