Memory Self-Efficacy,Aging, and Memory Performance: The Roles of Effort and Persistence

The relative importance of mental effort, as indicated by strategy use, and persistence as potential mediators of the memory self-efficacy (MSE)/memory performance relationship was investigated within a sample of 26 adults aged 65 years and older. It was found that persistence but not strategy use was predictive of performance on a free-recall task. Age-related declines were found in persistence, performance, and MSE but not in strategy use. Counter to expectation, neither strategy use nor persistence was significantly related to a global measure of MSE. These results highlight the importance in MSE research of distinguishing mental effort and persistence, of task-specific measures of MSE, and of considering age-related changes within the elderly population. Implications for MSE intervention programs are briefly discussed.     

Social skills interventions across school settings: Case study reviews of students with mild disabilities

This study investigates the efficacy of a social skills training program with seven mildly handicapped students across three school settings: regular classroom, special education resource room, and recess. It was found that social skills training generated improvement on both pre-post measures and behavior ratings. Improvements were maintained 2 weeks after treatment was discontinued for seven students. All students' performance generalized from resource room to regular classroom settings; only four students' performance generalized to the recess setting.     

Recent Conferences

Atomic theory or the nature of matter is a principal concept in science and science education. This has, however, been complicated by the difficulty students have in learning the concept and the subsequent construction of many alternative models. To understand better the conceptual barriers to learning atomic structure, this study explores the troublesome nature of this fundamental scientific concept. In order to illustrate the distinction of student understanding by threshold barriers, this study chose three particularly high‐achieving students from an original interview sample of 20 students who were selected from an introductory college chemistry course. The pre‐course and post‐course interview responses were examined and compared in detail. This study considers the concepts of ‘probability’ and ‘energy quantization’ to both describe the structure of the threshold of understanding students’ need to negotiate in their construction of the target model of atomic structure. In this respect, this study suggests atomic structure as a possible threshold concept for further study in science. Identifying the nature and structure of the threshold of understanding confronting students, and analyzing the troublesomeness of atomic structure, provides valuable information for understanding student learning difficulties, and insight into how they may be addressed.     

Nature, not books: scientists and the origins of the nature-study movement in the 1890s

Scientists played a key role in the first systematic introduction of nature study into North American public schools in the late nineteenth century. The initiatives of Wilbur Jackman and John Merle Coulter, affiliated with the young University of Chicago, and Liberty Hyde Bailey and Anna Botsford Comstock, at Cornell University, coincided with the "new education" reform movement that found object lessons and experience-based education superior to textbook teaching. Educational psychologists and philosophers of the 1890s, including G. Stanley Hall, related curriculum methods to perceived developmental stages in children, with a focus on immediate experience. Putting these pedagogical ideas--gained in summer institutes, normal schools, and programs at Chicago and Cornell--into practice were administrators and classroom teachers in both urban and rural classrooms. By 1900, a consensus about the value of nature study among scientists, community leaders, and teachers established it as the recognized general method of studying the natural world in public schools across much of the United States.     

Reliability of power and velocity variables collected during the traditional and ballistic bench press exercise

This study aimed to examine the reliability of different power and velocity variables during the Smith machine bench press (BP) and bench press throw (BPT) exercises. Twenty-two healthy men conducted four testing sessions after a preliminary BP one-repetition maximum (1RM) test. In a counterbalanced order, participants performed two sessions of BP in one week and two sessions of BPT in another week. Mean propulsive power, peak power, mean propulsive velocity, and peak velocity at each tenth percentile (20–70% of 1RM) were recorded by a linear transducer. The within-participants coefficient of variation (CV) was higher for the load–power relationship compared to the load–velocity relationship in both the BP (5.3% vs. 4.1%; CV ratio = 1.29) and BPT (4.7% vs. 3.4%; CV ratio = 1.38). Mean propulsive variables showed lower reliability than peak variables in both the BP (5.4% vs. 4.0%, CV ratio = 1.35) and BPT (4.8% vs. 3.3%, CV ratio = 1.45). All variables were deemed reliable, with the peak velocity demonstrating the lowest within-participants CV. Based upon these findings, the peak velocity should be chosen for the accurate assessment of BP and BPT performance.     

Identification of Alcohol by Smell among Preschoolers: Evidence for Early Socialization about Drugs Occurring in the Home

This study tested preschoolers' ability to provide accurate verbal associations to alcoholic beverage odors and whether this ability was related to parental drinking patterns and motivations. Older preschoolers performed better than younger preschoolers; photographic cues improved performance; children who correctly identified a substance by smell had socially appropriate knowledge of the culturally appropriate users of the substance; children reported liking substances that are used mainly by children and adults, and generally reported disliking substances whose use is legally limited to adults only; children were better at identifying substances they commonly use, but success at recognition of alcoholic beverages was related to heavier parental drinking and use of alcohol for escape reasons. Findings have implications for theories of socialization to drug use and for models of prevention.     

Reconsidering Standards and Criteria

An early debate about the nature of setting standards on educational achievement tests centered on the extent to which resulting standards were arbitrary. Subsequent research in the area has advanced solutions to many practical standard setting problems, but the more fundamental issue regarding the empirical grounding of judgmental standard setting procedures has remained unresolved and largely unaddressed. This article reviews some of the salient elements of the debate about the nature of standard setting on educational assessments and suggests that the dispute can never be satisfactorily resolved within the current paradigm. A reconcep-tualization of the nature of standard setting is proposed, and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Exploring Division-I Student-Athletes’ Memorable Messages From Their Anticipatory Socialization

This study explored the socialization of 118 Division-I student-athletes via the topics of memorable messages that they received prior to their arrival on campus. Ten topics were identified (i.e., desirable attitudes, hard work, physical skill or ability, opportunities, pride, inclusion, challenges, athletes as symbols, the importance of education, and the duration of college athletics) using first cycle coding and were subsequently categorized as either addressing the characteristics or experiences of collegiate student-athletes using second cycle coding. These findings continue to demonstrate that characteristics and experiences associated with roles are prevalent within athletes’ memorable messages but also highlight the inherent ambiguity and the contradictions regarding how to use these messages and balance the dual roles of being a student-athlete. This study provides a novel communicative lens for understanding athlete socialization but underscores the need to recognize receivers’ processing and application of memorable messages.     

Communication Between Early Educators and Parents who Speak English as a Second Language A Semantic and Pragmatic Perspective

In this article, we discuss communication between early educators speaking their native language and parents who speak English as a second language. Parents who may have a limited proficiency in the second language face challenges to understanding semantic and pragmatic aspects of English. Actual early childhood conference talk in which parents were speaking English as a second language will illustrate potential difficulties to listening comprehension and communication. Additionally, semantics and pragmatics will be used as a framework for recommending strategies to facilitate these parents?? ability to comprehend and communicate during discussions with early educators.