The impact of linguistic similarity on cross-cultural comparability of students’ perceptions of teaching quality

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Valid cross-country comparisons of student learning and pivotal factors contributing to it, such as teaching quality, offer the possibility...     

Concurrent and predictive validity of the WISC-R,McCarthy Scales,Woodcock-Johnson,and academic achievement

Twenty-six normal first-grade children (M = 7.0 years) were administered the WISC-R, the McCarthy Scales, and the Woodcock-Johnson Scales of Cognitive Ability. Two years later, their levels of academic achievement were determined by way of the WRAT and global teacher ratings of classroom performance. Pearson intercorrelations among the summary indices of the three intellectual measures were significant and uniformly high (rang. 77-.95). Correlations between first-grade ability scores and third-grade achievement measures also were significant (range .64-.90), suggesting strong predictive validity for each of the cognitive instruments. Though not significantly so, the correlations between the Woodcock-Johnson and achievement tended to be the highest. The results indicate that all three intellectual measures are appropriate for predicting later academic achievement in young school-aged children.     

Book reviews

Gaining Independence: A Manual for Planning the Launch of a Nonprofit Electronic Publishing Venture, version 1.0 by Howard Goldstein Published by SPARC, available online: http://www.arl.org/sparc/GI Indexers and Indexing in Fact and Fiction edited by Hazel K. Bell The British Library, London, 2001. Pp. 160. Paper, £16. ISBN 0-7123-4729-1 Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook by Maggie Jones and Neil Beagrie The British Library, Nov. 2001. Pp. 145. Spiral bound, £15.00. ISBN 0 7123 0886 5. Copies can be ordered from Turpin Distribution Services Ltd. Publishing Law, 2nd edn by Hugh Jones and Christopher Benson Routledge, 2002. Cased, £65.00, ISBN 0-415-26153-8; paper, £24.99, ISBN 0-415-26154-6 How to Survive Peer Review by Elizabeth Wager, Fiona Godlee and Tom Jefferson London: BMJ Books, 2002. Pp. v + 62. £12.95. ISBN 0-7279-1686-6     

In Physics Education,Perception Matters

Student difficulties in science learning are frequently attributed to misconceptions about scientific concepts. We argue that domain‐general perceptual processes may also influence students' ability to learn and demonstrate mastery of difficult science concepts. Using the concept of center of gravity (CoG), we show how student difficulty in applying CoG to an object such as a baseball bat can be accounted for, at least in part, by general principles of perception (i.e., not exclusively physics‐based) that make perceiving the CoG of some objects more difficult than others. In particular, it is perceptually difficult to locate the CoG of objects with asymmetric‐extended properties. The basic perceptual features of objects must be taken into account when assessing students' classroom performance and developing effective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching methods.     

Investigating Microadaptation in One-to-One Human Tutoring

The authors investigated whether some advantages of tutoring over other instructional methods are due to microadaptation, or, tutors basing their actions on assessments of tutees they develop during tutoring. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, independent variables were shared experience (tutors either worked with the same or a different tutee in each of four segment of the tutoring session) and communication context (face-to-face or computer-mediated). Although there were no overall learning differences across experience conditions, tutees who worked with the same tutor demonstrated better learning of concepts initially discussed during the final tutoring segment. Shared experience led to accurate competence assessments only in the computer-mediated context, suggesting that cognitive load influences assessment development. However, there was no evidence of micro-adaptation.     

Learning to solve ill-defined statistics problems: does self-explanation quality mediate the worked example effect?

Instructional Science - Extensive research has established that successful learning from an example is conditional on an important learning activity: self-explanation. Moreover, a model for...