Accountability—try fishing!

STOPPING OUT by Judi R. Kesselman. New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1976. viii + 218 pp. Appendix, bibliography, index. $8.95.

LIBRARIES FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW by Virginia H. Mathews. Garden City, New York: Doubleday &; Company, Inc., 1976. xii + 228 pp. $3.95.

EVALUATION AND REFORM: THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965/Title 1 by Milbery Wallin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1975. xiii + 139 pp. $7.95.

ADVENTURE, MYSTERY, AND ROMANCE by John G. Cawelti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. viii + 336 pp. $15.00     

ADULTHOOD AND REMINISCENCE: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

Although reminiscence is a behavior common to all ages, research to date has been conducted only with older adults. This study sought to explore the phenomenon with adults of various ages with the anticipation that comparative information would lead to a better conceptualization of the behavior and its functions. It was hypothesized that there would be no difference in what adults reminisced about, why they reminisced, or how they reminisced with respect to age, sex, education, or socioeconomic status. A sample of 309 adults ranging in age from 18 to 90 were asked to complete a survey exploring various aspects of reminiscence. Analysis of variance and chi‐square were used to assess differences in reminiscent behavior across age, sex, education, and social class. There were no systematic differences with regard to education or social class. On several dimensions sex emerged as a more important variable than age, suggesting that age may not be as important a consideration in simple reminiscence as has been previously assumed.     

The role of reinforcement and nonreinforcement in an operant frustration effect

Male albino rats were run in a discrete-trial two-bar operant analog of the double alley. Completion of a FR 4 response chain on the first bar was rewarded 50% of the time for the 12 experimental Ss, but was never rewarded for the 12 control Ss. Both groups received consistent reward at the end of a FR 4 chain on the second bar. Eighty-four trials were given at a rate of four trials per day. A significantly faster rate of responding on the second bar was found following nonrewarded first-bar ratios than following rewarded first-bar ratios. This frustration effect was not attributable to response depression, since the nonrewarded performance of the experimental group exceeded that of the control group.     

Current Validity of 1975 and 1985 SATs: Implications for Validity Trends Since the Mid-1970s

The aim of this study was to appraise whether different forms of the SA T used since the mid-1970s varied in their correlations with academic performance criteria in the same cohort of examinees. A 1975 form and a 1985 form were administered to two random samples of high school juniors, and self-reported grade point average and high school rank were obtained. The SAT-Verbal and SAT-Mathematical scores generally had similar correlations with the grade criteria in the two samples. The principal conclusion is that the 1975 form of the SAT does not have greater validity than the 1985 form in assessing academic performance, at least at the high school level. This outcome offers no support for the hypothesis that the decline in the SAT's ability to predict college grades since the mid-1970s, observed in recent research, is attributable to changes in the test.     

Innovating in the real world: exploring institutional effects on tertiary teacher innovations in New Zealand

Abstract

Innovation is a key goal of many tertiary education and distance learning providers. This research explores how teachers and educational designers across three New Zealand tertiary institutions worked to innovatively achieve teaching goals. A longitudinal design using the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework explored the influence of individual and institutional factors on innovation in online course design. Data included interviews, observations of practice, and publicly available institutional documents, which were coded using a grounded theory approach. Peer relationships and institutional technologies were significant in enabling staff to work innovatively. Constraining factors included high workload, research pressures, lack of time to experiment, and limited technological support. Contradictions between institutional policies and teachers’ goals in innovating were noted. This research has relevance to those working in a variety of educational settings due to the increasing influence of institutional and government policy on teaching practice.     

Reasons for Changing Answers: An Evaluation Using Personal Interviews

Researchers investigating answer changing have consistently found the preponderance of changes on objective items to be from wrong to right, but little is understood about the mechanisms involved in this phenomenon. In this study, personal interviews were combined with instruction in answer-changing research to investigate further the processes involved in answer changing. Students changed answers and gained from changing, with those in the upper two thirds of the classes gaining the most. Each test-taking strategy produced a mean gain, but particular strategies were not significantly correlated with percentage of gain or percentage of change. Most students reported changing answers for thoughtful reasons such as rereading, rethinking, or remembering more information; very few changes were due to clerical errors. For each reason, most changes were wrong-to-right. We conclude that reconsideration of test items is probably underestimated in answer-changing studies. The role of memory should be considered in why people change and in how successful they judge their changing to have been.     

Visualizing statistical edutainment: What you see is what you get

Concepts of data visualization are explored using statistics educational fun items and illustrated by sharing results from the experiment we conducted on cartoon captions.