Views of cheating among college students and faculty

College students (N = 446) and faculty (N = 97) completed a survey examining views of cheating. Agreement was noted on most situations. When differences were noted, students tended to be stricter than faculty in their evaluations and were more likely than faculty to label a situation as cheating. Opinions and views of cheating were influenced more by behavior, whether “premeditated” or “opportunistic,” than by intention.     

Early Childhood Parenting Predicts Late Childhood Brain Functional Connectivity During Emotion Perception and Reward Processing

Seventy-nine 3-year olds and their mothers participated in a laboratory-based task to assess maternal hostility. Mothers also reported their behavioral regulation of their child. Seven years later, functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired while viewing emotional faces and completing a reward processing task. Maternal hostility predicted more negative amygdala connectivity during exposure to sad relative to neutral faces with frontal and parietal regions as well as more negative left ventral striatal connectivity during monetary gain relative to loss feedback with the right posterior orbital frontal cortex and right inferior frontal gyrus. In contrast, maternal regulation predicted enhanced cingulo-frontal connectivity during monetary gain relative to loss feedback. Results suggest parenting is associated with alterations in emotion and reward processing circuitry 7–8 years later.     

Persistence of pediatric post traumatic stress disorder after 2 years

One-hundred and fifty-six children were randomly evaluated at an inner-city juvenile/family court. These children were removed from their parent's custody subsequent to a finding of severe child maltreatment. From our original sample of 156 children, 62 met strict criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Fifty-two of these 62 were successfully recruited and participated in the 2 year re-examination. Each PTSD diagnosis was conferred by the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents (DICA). From our sample of 52 PTSD children re-examined after 2 years, 17 (32.7%) retained the full PTSD diagnosis, while 67.3% did not meet criteria.     

But good strategy instructors are constructivists!

The general nature of constructivist educators' views of teaching are overviewed first, followed by analysis of good strategy instruction in constructivist terms. That good strategy instruction is scaffolded teaching is particularly emphasized. Scaffolded teacher-student interactions necessitate that students experience unique instruction that stimulates a great deal of student construction of to-be-acquired competencies. The only important difference between good strategy teaching and teaching recommended by constructivist educators is in the explicitness of instruction, with relatively greater teacher input about what is to be learned during good strategy instruction.     

Entrepreneurship Education and Lower Socioeconomic Black Youth: An Empirical Investigation

This study tested the effects of an entrepreneurship education intervention, the New Youth Entrepreneur curriculum, on lower socioeconomic black high-school students' knowledge of basic and advanced concepts in entrepreneurship. Ninety-five high school sophomores (over 85% black) from a lower socioeconomic neighborhood made up the sample for the experimental design: 51 in the treatment group and 44 in the control group. The two instruments used measured participants' knowledge of basic entrepreneurship concepts and higher cognitive levels of entrepreneurship learning, including comprehension, application, and analysis. The treatment group experienced the New Youth Entrepreneur (NYE) curriculum for one period a day for a semester, while the control group was exposed to basic entrepreneurship concepts at an awareness level as part of a general business education course. It was predicted and found that the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on all dimensions of entrepreneurship tested. The study results confirm that appropriate curricular innovation can significantly influence the acquisition of entrepreneurship concepts and skills by lower socioeconomic black students. They also confirm that these same students can even be energized to the point of moving from opportunity recognition to initial business implementation.     

Assessing Model Similarity in Structural Equation Modeling

Two models can be nonequivalent, but fit very similarly across a wide range of data sets. These near-equivalent models, like equivalent models, should be considered rival explanations for results of a study if they represent plausible explanations for the phenomenon of interest. Prior to conducting a study, researchers should evaluate plausible models that are alternatives to those hypothesized to evaluate whether they are near-equivalent or equivalent and, in so doing, address the adequacy of the study’s methodology. To assess the extent to which alternative models for a study are empirically distinguishable, we propose 5 indexes that quantify the degree of similarity in fit between 2 models across a specified universe of data sets. These indexes compare either the maximum likelihood fit function values or the residual covariance matrices of models. Illustrations are provided to support interpretations of these similarity indexes.     

Learning Visualization Strategies: A qualitative investigation

The following study investigates the range of strategies individuals develop to infer and interpret cross-sections of three-dimensional objects. We focus on the identification of mental representations and problem-solving processes made by 11 individuals with the goal of building training applications that integrate the strategies developed by the participants in our study. Our results suggest that although spatial transformation and perspective-taking techniques are useful for visualizing cross-section problems, these visual processes are augmented by analytical thinking. Further, our study shows that participants employ general analytic strategies for extended periods which evolve through practice into a set of progressively more expert strategies. Theoretical implications are discussed and five main findings are recommended for integration into the design of education software that facilitates visual learning and comprehension.     

Effects of an Educational Experience Incorporating an Inventory of Factors Potentially Influencing Student Acceptance of Biological Evolution

This investigation provides an extensive review of scientific, religious, and otherwise non-scientific factors that may influence student acceptance of biological evolution. We also measure the extent to which students' levels of acceptance changed following an educational experience designed to address an inclusive inventory of factors identified as potentially affecting student acceptance of evolution (n = 81, pre-test/post-test) n = 37, one-year longitudinal). Acceptance of evolution was measured using the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) instrument among participants enrolled in a secondary-level academic programme during the summer prior to their final year of high school and as they transitioned to the post-secondary level. Student acceptance of evolution was measured to be significantly higher than initial levels both immediately following and over one year after the educational experience. Results reported herein carry implications for future quantitative and qualitative research as well as for cross-disciplinary instruction plans related to evolutionary science and non-scientific factors which may influence student understanding of evolution.     

Community Level Factors and Child Maltreatment Rates

Using census and administrative agency data for 177 urban census tracts, variation in rates of officially reported child maltreatment is found to be related to structural determinants of community social organization: economic and family resources, residential instability, household and age structure, and geographic proximity of neighborhoods to concentrated poverty. Furthermore, child maltreatment rates are found to be intercorrelated with other indicators of the breakdown of community social control and organization. These other indicators are similarly affected by the structural dimensions of neighborhood context. Children who live in neighborhoods that are characterized by poverty, excessive numbers of children per adult resident, population turnover, and the concentration of female-headed families are at highest risk of maltreatment. This analysis suggests that child maltreatment is but one manifestation of community social organization and that its occurrence is related to some of the same underlying macro-social conditions that foster other urban problems.