Early Education in Ethiopia: Progress and Prospects

Explored herein are historical roots of preschool through elementary grade education in the East Africa nation of Ethiopia. Also included are current difficult challenges to educational improvement as well as promising developments such as greater involvement of private institutions, organizations, and individuals in supporting Ministry of Education reform initiatives.     

Reward and ideational fluency in preschool children

This study examined the effects of rewards on the ideational fluency of 75 preschool children. Assigned to a reward or nonreward condition, the children were administered two ideational fluency tasks, Unusual Uses and Pattern Meanings. Analyses revealed a significant main effect for reward on the ideational fluency components of originality, total fluency, and flexibility. In all cases the rewarded subjects scored lower than the nonrewarded group. These findings support the growing body of evidence that rewards are detrimental to creative functioning.     

Private and Public Schooling in Ghana: A Census and Comparative Survey

A census and survey of schools in the district of Ga, Ghana, explored the nature and extent of private education, and compared inputs to public and private schooling. Three quarters of all schools found were private, with almost as many unregistered private as government schools. Several important differences between registered and unregistered private schools were noted, including age, fee levels charged, teacher salaries and class size. A range of inputs, such as teacher activity, availability of desks, chairs, libraries, toilets and drinking water, were used to compare inputs to government, unregistered and registered private schools. Some conclusions are explored about the potential role for the private sector in helping meet “education for all” targets.     

An ecological explanation of factors associated with the demise of independent liberal arts II colleges

Recent demographic trends and growth in the public sector of higher education have created severe strains for many private liberal arts colleges. The population ecology model, which explains the survival or demise of organizations in terms of their ability to negotiate for resources in their environment, provides a framework for assessing predictors of continued success among colleges. A three-way discriminant analysis based on the population ecology framework and other empirical research led to the successful classification of almost 72% of a sample of colleges in terms of their experiences during the 1970s. Number of departments, median state income, library holdings per enrollee, sectarian affiliation, annual tuition, Roman Catholic affiliation, and SAT composite score were found to be major predictors.     

Plus/minus grading and motivation: an empirical study of student choice and performance

This paper considers whether student motivation might be impacted by the replacement of a straight (A, B, C, D, F) grading system with a plus/minus system (A, A?, B+ … D?, F). The data that are examined are from several undergraduate economics classes at a mid‐sized midwestern university in the United States. The data includes student characteristics, student performance and students’ choices of either a plus/minus or a straight grading system. In this admittedly small‐scale study students, who chose plus/minus grading, were not significantly more motivated than students who opted for straight grading.     

The Effects of Political Violence on Palestinian Children's Behavior Problems: A Risk Accumulation Model

Interviews with 150 Palestinian mothers and their children living amidst the Intifada in the West Bank were conducted to assess exposure to political violence and family negativity as risk factors associated with behavioral problems as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist. The number of risks present in the child's life was significantly correlated with the number of behavioral problems the child exhibited ( R = .53, p < .001). The analysis further examined the role of gender, age, and community context in moderating the impact of high levels of accumulated risk on children's behavioral problems. Under conditions of high accumulated risk, boys evidenced more problems than girls, and younger children exhibited more problems than older children. Community context (as indicated by a high or low level of political violence) was a significant factor for girls but not for boys.     

The inheritance of behavioral wildness in house mice (Mus musculus L.)

Fourteen behavioral measures were ranked according to their ability to differentiate performances of a wild population of mice from three domestic inbred strains. These “wildness” rankings were then analyzed for their ability to predict genetic and Genotype by Environment interactions. Genetic parameters were derived from analysis of three inbred domestic strains and their three hybrid crosses via the diallel technique of genetic analysis. Genotype by Environment interactions were assessed both as mean differences in stock performances resulting from rearing in a laboratory vs naturalistic environment and as differences in environmental variability within stock genotypes. Behavioral characters ranking high on “wildness” failed to demonstrate any unitary pattern of Genotype by Environment interactions. The diallel genetic analysis revealed many examples of additive variation but relatively few examples of dominant variation. An extremely wide range of interactions occurred between genotype and rearing environments, with “wildness” and “developmental homeostasis” concepts both failing to account for all the observed interactions.