Bias hypotheses under scrutiny: investigating the validity of student assessment of university teaching by means of external observer ratings

To advance the discussion on the validity of student evaluations of university teaching, student ratings of two teaching dimensions – student involvement and rapport – were compared with corresponding observer ratings. Seven potential bias variables were tested with regard to their impact on the students’ teaching assessment: three teacher characteristics (first impression, enthusiasm, humour) and four student characteristics (prior interest, expected grades, study experience, class attendance). Bias was defined as an impediment of the students’ assessment of teaching on course level. By means of bivariate correlations with course averages and two-level latent moderated structural equations, data of 1,716 students in 80 courses were analysed. Results showed that all three teacher characteristics were genuinely connected to rapport, and even explained variance of the student-rated variable when controlling for observer-rated rapport. The assessment of student involvement was not modified by the teacher characteristics except for teacher enthusiasm, which affected the student evaluation when controlling for observed involvement and, moreover, moderated the relation between the observed and the student-rated variable. For the examined student characteristics, no biasing effects were found – neither on rapport nor on student involvement.     

From school to higher education in Australia

This paper addresses the question of why young people go on from school to higher education in Australia. A person-situation interactionist theory to explain decisions taken in the matter is developed, and in the light of this theory a model to predict entry to higher education is advanced. The model is tested using data from separate studies in two Australian States, Victoria and Queensland. Results of bivariate and logistic regression analyses are generally consistent with expectations from the model. Certain interactive effects of variables in the model upon entry to higher education are reported.     

The role of personal best (PB) and dichotomous achievement goals in students’ academic motivation and engagement: a longitudinal investigation

This study assessed the role of prior personal best goals in predicting subsequent academic motivation and engagement. A total of 1160 high school students participated in a longitudinal survey study exploring the extent to which personal best and mastery and performance (dichotomous) achievement goals predict students’ academic motivation and engagement across the course of a full academic year. Findings showed that personal best goals predicted higher motivation and engagement a year later. Along with personal best goals, mastery goals also predicted higher motivation and engagement, while the role of performance goals was either neutral or negative. These findings provide support for the contention that personal best goals are associated with higher motivation and engagement across time.     

Understanding and Controlling Learning Operations in Special Education

Developments arising from recent theory‐directed attempts to understand learning are exposing weaknesses in the monopoly position attained by the operant model in special education. These new developments attest to the importance, the primacy and the functional significance of learning to use and to relate events (stimuli) in the environment. They also highlight the way in which the operant model excludes important learning details from consideration, not because they are intrinsically unmeasurable, but because measurable manifestations of them are not available at the time learning is taking place. Instructional technology, when updated to take into account these new developments, should be able to provide more reliable and more successful acquision, more precision in task analyses and, especially, more success in complex, longitudinal learning domains. Developing new technologies to supplement the successful operant ones should enable us to set higher expectations for success with, for example, intellectually disabled people in those domains in which they traditionally fail.     

Taste-sickness associations in young rats over varying delays,stimulus, and test conditions

We showed, as had previous investigators, that young rats formed taste-sickness associations that were weaker than those of mature rats; associations were not formed over a delay greater than 45 min, and aversions did not survive a 60-min test session. The difficulty young rats had withholding consumption and their poor sensitivity to taste and sickness contributed to the weak aversions. Choice tests revealed aversions that had apparently extinguished during a no-choice test, and animals that were allowed to mature prior to the first test readily withheld consumption for 60 min. Furthermore, young rats formed an aversion over a delay of 2.5 h when the concentrations of saccharin and lithium chloride were increased. Aversions to the stronger saccharin did not extinguish over two one-bottle tests and were retained for 52 days.     

Toward a cognitive schemata theory of self-instruction

An initial outline of a cognitive schemata theory of self-instruction is presented. Three levels of schemata are described briefly. Attention then is devoted to the cognitive organization and operation of these schemata in relation to procedural and declarative knowledge stores, and in relation to everchanging situational information. The primary objective is to provide an initial basis for conceptualizing the cognitive competence required for self-instruction.Requests for reprints should be directed to Jack Martin, Associate Professor, at the above address. Work on this paper was begun while the author was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.     

Is religious education compatible with science education?

This paper tackles a highly controversial issue: the problem of the compatibility of science and religion, and its bearing on science and religious education respectively. We challenge the popular view that science and religion are compatible or even complementary. In order to do so, we give a brief characterization of our conceptions of science and religion. Conspicuous differences at the doctrinal, metaphysical, methodological and attitudinal level are noted. Regarding these aspects, closer examination reveals that science and religion are not only different but in fact incompatible. Some consequences of our analysis for education as well as for education policy are explored. We submit that a religious education, particularly at an early age, is an obstacle to the development of a scientific mentality. For this and other reasons, religious education should be kept away from public schools and universities. Instead of promoting a religious world view, we should teach our children what science knows about religion, i.e., how science explains the existence of religion in historical, biological, psychological and sociological terms.