Teacher attributions of student failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student

The aim of this study was to examine the relation between teacher attributions of student school failure and teacher behavior toward the failing student. A structural equation model was proposed and its ability to fit the data was tested. It was found that teachers tend to behave in ways that indicate more pity and less anger when they attribute a student's low achievement to her or his low abilities, whereas they express more anger when attributing low achievement to the student's low effort. In contrast to previous research that argues in favor of anger as a high ability cue, this study has found that the presence of anger was associated with a teacher tendency to give‐up efforts to help the student improve. This giving‐up behavior was negatively related to the tendency of the teachers to accept some responsibility for the student failure. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Accidental Archivists: Lessons Learned from a Digital Archive Project

This article tells the story of the University of Colorado Law Library's successful effort to develop its first digital archive. The sudden death of the law school's dean was the catalyst for this project, with a goal to unveil the archive at a memorial symposium scheduled nine months in the future. The University of Colorado Law Library staff had never tackled a project of this type or scale before. This article discusses the technological, cataloging, and management issues that were encountered during the project. It also provides advice and tips on how librarians in their own institutions can accomplish such a project.     

Serials Report

This article describes the 2012 libraries@cambridge conference, the annual conference of librarians working in the University, Faculty, Department, and College libraries that serve the University of Cambridge. It analyzes the impact of the conference papers on the future development of library services in Cambridge and by extension, similar institutions. Further, the authors contextualize the conference within the broader national future framework of the Research Libraries UK (RLUK) Strategic Plan “The Power of Knowledge” and the future role for subject librarians documented in the Research Information Network 2012 report “Re-skilling for Research: An Investigation into the Role and Skills of Subject and Liaison Librarians Required to Effectively Support the Evolving Needs of Researchers.”     

Adults’ spelling and understanding of possession and plurality: an intervention study

In English, some words sound the same but are distinguished by silent written markers of their morphological status, as in plurals (e.g., cities), singular possessives (e.g., city’s) and plural possessives (e.g., cities’). We examined undergraduates’ ability to correctly omit or position apostrophes in these three word types before and after a 3-week intervention that focused on the conceptual bases for plurality and possession, as well as their associated spelling rules. Pre-test spelling was imperfect for plurals and poor for possessives, especially plural possessives. Abstract understanding of plurality and possession, measured in a morphological awareness task, was also relatively poor. The intervention resulted in significant but imperfect improvement on all tasks, with post-test morphological awareness predicting post-test spelling of plurals and possessives, even after controls for general spelling ability. Control participants showed no change. We suggest that adults’ difficulty in spelling possessives stems from a shaky grasp of the underlying morphological concepts, and we discuss possibilities for future intervention.     

Building a Foundation for Collection Management Decisions

Salisbury University and the University of Maryland, College Park, both undertook projects to evaluate the effectiveness of EBSCO Information Service’s EBSCONET® Usage Consolidation product and the usefulness of the extracted data for collection development decisions. The goals of implementation were to centralize the collection and analysis of e-resource usage data and to allow collection management librarians easy access to usage and cost per use data to aid in their decision making. The presenters discussed how staff at each institution populated Usage Consolidation and presented usage reports to collection managers; how collection managers responded to the data; and how they used the data to inform collection management decisions.     

The Spelling of Vowels Is Influenced by Australian and British English Dialect Differences

Two experiments examined the influence of dialect on the spelling of vowel sounds. British and Australian children (6 to 8 years) and university students wrote words whose unstressed vowel sound is spelled i or e and pronounced /I/ or /?/. Participants often (mis)spelled these vowel sounds as they pronounced them. When vowels were pronounced similarly in both dialects (e.g., comic, with /I/; fossil, with /?/), British and Australian writers wrote the correct spelling similarly often. For vowels pronounced as /I/ in British English but /?/ in Australian English and spelled with i (e.g., muffin), British writers correctly wrote i significantly more than Australian writers. For vowels with this same pronunciation pattern but spelled instead with e(e.g., rocket), Australian writers correctly wrote e significantly more often than British writers. Dialect-related phonological differences influenced the spelling of both beginning and skilled spellers across both familiar and unfamiliar words.     

Achievement testing with the Wechsler Quicktest: an examination of its psychometric properties and applied utility with a Greek–Cypriot sample

The study aimed to field‐test a Greek version of the Wechsler Quicktest and to examine its psychometric properties. The Quicktest was individually administered to 208 students, aged 5–14 years, along with a reading test. Based on the Rasch analysis, data for the Quicktest subtests showed acceptable fit to the model. Also, correlations were found between the Quicktest subtests. Moreover, the Quicktest was significantly correlated to school grades, teachers’ predictions, scores on the Learning Disability Evaluation Scale (LDES) and Trigka’s Reading Test. A Spearman analysis indicated significant correlations between scores on the Quicktest subtests and the grade level of students. Also, a regression analysis indicated that scores on the Quicktest can predict the scores on the other measures. Results supported the Quicktest’s criterion‐related validity and construct validity and, also, its utility as part of a systematic diagnostic procedure for learning disabilities.