On the Distinction between False Belief Understanding and Subscribing to an Interpretive Theory of Mind

2 groups of 5–8-year-olds were examined in an effort to explore the developing relations between false belief understanding and an awareness of the individualized nature of personal taste, on the one hand, and, on the other, a maturing grasp of the interpretive character of the knowing process. In Study 1, 20 children between 5 and 8 all behaved in accordance with hypotheses by proving to be indistinguishable in their already good grasp of the possibility of false beliefs and in their common assumption that differences of opinion concerning matters of taste are legitimate expressions of personal preferences. By contrast, only the 7- and 8-year-old children gave evidence of recognizing that ambiguous stimuli especially allow for warrantable differences of interpretation. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings with a group of 48 5-8-year-old subjects, again showing that while 5-year-olds easily pass a standard test of false belief understanding, only children of 7 or 8 ordinarily evidence an appreciation of the interpretive character of the knowing process.     

Ice Cream Seminars for Graduate Students: Imparting Chemical Information Literacy

SUMMARY

This article provides information on a chemical information literacy program designed primarily for new graduate students. The full implementation of this program is discussed, including defining its purpose, topics covered, content presented, methods of marketing, and evaluation. The result is a series of voluntary seminars given biweekly throughout the academic year. Seminars are based either around a particular resource or database or are centered on a topical problem that may be addressed using multiple resources. Evaluations show that graduate students are pleased with the seminars, including content covered and the format. Areas for future development and experimentation are also suggested.     

Multiple software review: Drawing path diagrams

Amos Draw v3.51. SmallWaters Inc., 1507 East 53rd Street, Suite 452, Chicago, IL. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

Chartist v1.7. NovaGraph, Inc., P. O. Box 80115, Richardson, TX. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

Microsoft PowerPoint v7. Microsoft Corp., One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052–6399. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

EQS v5.3. Multivariate Software, Inc., 4924 Balboa Boulevard, #368, Encino, CA. Windows® 3.x, 95, NT; Mac® OS 7.0 (and above).

MS Paint. (Packaged with Windows® 3.x, 95).

Visio v1.0. Visio Corp., 520 Pike Street, Suite 1800, Seattle, WA 98101. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.     

Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Beliefs,Coping Strategies,and Academic Performance: An Evaluation of Theoretical Models

Research has identified factors associated with academic success by evaluating relations among psychological and academic variables, although few studies have examined theoretical models to understand the complex links. This study used structural equation modeling to investigate whether the relation between test anxiety and final course grades was mediated by personal control, self-efficacy, goal orientation, coping strategies, and self-regulation. Participants were 297 undergraduate students taking an algebra course designed for engineering students. Results indicated that the proposed theoretical model was supported by the data, although a modified model produced a better fit. Other competing models were also tested. Collectively, analyses revealed that the psychological variables played important roles in predicting students’ grades, as all the structural coefficients and R ² statistics were statistically and practically significant. Findings suggest value in the development and testing of additional models that contribute to the expansion of intervention programs to enhance academic outcomes among students.     

Explaining School Performance in Literature: some Strategies of Causal Analysis

Bulcock, J. W. & Finn, J. D., 1975. Explaining School Performance in Literature: Some Strategies of Causal Analyses. Scand. J. educ. Res. 19, 75‐110. This paper focuses on the cultural and personality resources of individuals and their school related skills as determinants of achievement in mother tongue literature. A path analytic approach is used to test a popular model of literature achievement which is applied to a subsample of Swedish 14‐year‐olds selected from the data bank archive of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, University of Stockholm. Because the sex of the student and the amount of effort expended on school work account for variance in levels of performance over‐and‐above the causally interrelated system factors, it is necessary to control for the possibility of their confounding influence. Accordingly, a ‘pooling’ procedure is used for adjusting the correlation matrix in order to account for the bias in the regression model which is attributable to these factors. The logic of this procedure is developed in the appendix.

     

MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: APPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Although the use of mindfulness is increasing in other areas of applied psychology, school psychology has yet to embrace it in practice. This article introduces school psychologists to the burgeoning field of mindfulness psychology and to the possibilities that it offers to their discipline. A background on the Western scientific study and application of mindfulness provides a theoretical foundation to those unfamiliar with the topic. We then discuss the application of mindfulness technologies to various forms of service provision in the professional practice of school psychology. The innovative and novel avenues that mindfulness psychology offers to psychological science     

Images of assimilation: photographs of Indian schools in Arizona

In September 1939, Amy (Brown) Dauphinee took up her first teaching appointment at Tate Creek, British Columbia where 518 refugees had recently settled after fleeing Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Amy – an avowed Social Democrat and member of the Young Socialist League – quickly embraced the refugees who were largely trade union activists and Social Democrats themselves. However, by January the district school inspector had moved Amy to a new school. This paper illustrates how Amy constructed her teaching identity and pushed the boundaries circumscribing the lives of young women teachers in British Columbia during the first half of the twentieth century.