FACULTY ATTITUDES TOWARD EVALUATION OF TEACHING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO

This report summarizes the results of a survey of faculty member attitudes towards the evaluation of teaching at the University of Western Ontario. Although the existing system of evaluation is perceived as narrow in focus, ineffective in improving teaching and inflexible, faculty members still optimistically expect that a satisfactory system is possible.     

TELEVISION AND THE DEAF

Few television programmes are designed for the deaf viewer, partly because the potential audience is small, partly because production problems are manifest. In this paper, first delivered at the 1979 Conference of the Association, two speakers describe the development of series of television programmes tailor‐made for the profoundly deaf, and their usage in a school for such children. The first part of the paper is by Tony Wise, the last part by Ray Hill.     

Variables affecting alternation behavior in the cockroach,Blatta orientalis

To investigate alternation behavior in the cockroach as an invertebrate, three T-maze experiments were conducted assessing the effects of (a) intratrial (exposure) and intertrial (exposure to test) interval, (b) brightness similarity of the alternatives and response-direction factors, and (c) an initial free-choice vs. a varying number of forced-choice exposures. Alternation was enhanced with a long exposure on Trial 1, a short interval between Trial 1 and Trial 2 (test), greater dissimilarity (or discriminability) of the arm brightnesses and more frequent forced-choice exposures to an arm prior to test. These results highlight the role of intramaze brightness cues as controlling alternation in the cockroach and accord well with a response-to-change interpretation of the phenomenon. In addition, they suggest that the alternation paradigm can be used effectively to assay short-term memory storage in neurologically simple organisms.     

Positive and negative transfer of conditioned aversive stimuli to a conditioned appetitive excitor as a function of aversive US intensity

Rats were given Pavlovian aversive (Av) conditioning in which a weak (0.5-sec, 0.7-mA) or a strong (0.5-sec, 1.4-mA) footshock unconditioned stimulus (US) was presented alone or in a positive, zero, or negative correlation with a flashing-light conditioned stimulus (AvCS+, AvCSo, or AvCS?, respectively). Thereafter, the subjects received Pavlovian appetitive (Ap) conditioning in which the flashing-light CS was positively correlated in a forward order with the delivery of a food US. As anticipated, for subjects that had been trained with the strong shock US, the AvCS+ retarded and the AvCS? facilitated Ap conditioning relative to both the AvCSo and the novel-CS treatments, which did not differ in effect. However, the exact opposite prevailed for the AvCS+ and AvCS? subjects that had been trained with the weak shock US. On the basis of these and other data, we propose an “ABC” model of transfer that stresses the importance of affective, behavioral, and cognitive factors in accounting for the divergent results that are obtained in both Av-to-Ap and Ap-to-Av transfer paradigms.     

Construction and validation of a survey instrument to determine the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers

The gender-related challenges facing males entering the primary-school teaching profession have been well documented in the academic literature over recent decades. The majority of these data have come about through qualitative reports. Whilst qualitative methods provide important perspectives into these issues, the use of valid and reliable quantitative survey tools has received less attention. This paper discusses the construction, piloting, and subsequent tests for reliability and validity involved in developing a robust survey tool to measure the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers during their university study and professional experience in schools. Utilizing Senocak's four stages of survey development and Rasch modelling techniques, data analysis showed high levels of validity and reliability for the survey tool.