Psychosocial Factors That Predict the College Adjustment of First-Year Undergraduate Students: Implications for College Counselors

The authors describe psychosocial factors that predicted college adjustment of 1st-year undergraduate students on the basis of studies conducted in 2 universities of differing size, focus, and geographic location. Academic self-confidence, positive attitudes toward the university, and faculty and peer support significantly predicted more successful adjustment to college.     

An Experiment in Multinational Collaborative Learning and Group Work Using the Internet

In this paper we describe a pedagogic experiment, intended to support and encourage interactive group discussion among students from different universities, in different countries, in what we call Internet Seminars. In an Internet Seminar students and teachers cooperate via the Internet to research and discuss a common subject. In the case discussed here, the chosen subject, 'Teleworking' was selected as one which would have particular resonance with the medium of the seminar, and also as being a topic which is not, as yet, part of the mainstream teaching curriculum. The aims of the seminar, however, were not only or even primarily concerned with the subject material. We also hoped to encourage and help the students develop the transferable skills of project planning, research, team-working and communication, with the added stimulus of working in a multinational context. We describe the form of the seminar, report on its outcomes, and comment on the successes and failures of our approach. © 1999 IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers     

Opportunities Lost: The Pendulum in the USA National Science Education Standards

This article is based on my recent book Time for Science Education (Plenum Publishers, 1998). It begins with the treatment afforded the pendulum in the US National Science Education Standards, and a number of other contemporary curriculum documents. It notes that all of these documents advocate liberal, or wide, goals for science education, including students understanding something of the historical and cultural significance of science. It notes that all the documents ignore the very significant role played by the pendulum in the foundation of modern science, in solving the longitude problem, and in enabling the first accurate clocks to be constructed. There are thus lost opportunities for realising the laudable goals that the Standards set for US science education. Finally, it is claimed that realising these cultural goals for science education requires that the history and philosophy of science be more routinely incorporated into preservice and inservice courses for science teachers.     

African-American and Euro-American Preschoolers with Intellectual Disabilities: Patterns of Play with Toys

The patterns of cognitive play of 28 African-American and Euro-American preschool children with intellectual disabilities are reported. Fourteen children representing each group, matched on developmental age and family variables, were observed playing independently at home. Categorical and sequential play behaviors were coded from videotapes using a 15-second partial interval coding procedure. The pattern of African-American children's play was more reflective of their developmental age than the pattern of Euro-American children's play for their developmental age. Between group effects emerged for only 1 of 15 dependent variables included in the analyses: length of single scheme sequence. The results highlight children's strengths and challenge commonly held stereotypes. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

Critical Literacy Strategies for Environmental Educators

This paper seeks to extend the range of critical literacy strategies that environmental educators might use in their engagement with curriculum policies. The paper focuses on a recent curriculum and professional development project from Australia as the context to illuminate and explicate particular critical reading strategies. Specifically, the paper introduces several critical reading strategies by applying them to an evaluation of the Global Education Project's review of global perspectives in curriculum policies from around Australia.     

Dissociation of conditioned appetitive and consummatory sexual behavior: Satiation and extinction tests

Sexual responses were conditioned in male Japanese quail using the opportunity to copulate with a female as the unconditioned stimulus (US). The conditioned stimulus (CS) was a 3-D object made of a taxidermically prepared female quail head mounted on a terry-cloth body. Both appetitive conditioned responses (approach and proximity to the CS) and consummatory conditioned responses (mount and cloacal contact directed toward the CS) developed when 2-min presentations of the CS were followed immediately by the US, but not when the CS and US were separated by trace intervals of 10 or 20 min (Experiment 1). Postconditioning sexual satiation suppressed conditioned cloacal contact responses more than conditioned approach to the CS (Experiment 2), and “acute” extinction suppressed both conditioned mounting and conditioned cloacal contact responses more than conditioned approach to the CS (Experiment 3). These results demonstrate a functional dissociation between conditioned appetitive and consummatory responses and imply that the motivational and/or associative mechanisms underlying the two types of behavior are distinct.     

The Unification of Post-Compulsory Education: Towards a Conceptual Framework

The drive to 'unify'post-compulsory education and training systems is one of the most important current developments in education policy. However the concept of 'unification' lacks clarity, is not widely recognised, and is pursued through different measures in different countries. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework with which to analyse the different meanings of and debates about unification. Using England and Scotland as examples, we show how the framework may be used to analyse existing systems, reform strategies, and processes and pressures for change. The framework is exploratory and will need to be tested and developed in relation to a wider variety of education systems.     

Analysis of student’s responses to contradictory results obtained by simple observation or controlling variables

This study investigated students’ responses to presentations of experimental results that conflicted with their preconceptions regarding electric circuits, and how those responses varied according to the type of inquiry skills required to obtain the results. One hundred and twenty students of both sexes were randomly selected from a science high school in Korea. They were questioned about their preconceptions regarding an electric circuit and forty-two students with relevant misconceptions were selected. The students were randomly assigned to two groups, and presented with one of two sheets of paper presenting results obtained by a fictional investigator. The first group was presented with results that were obtained by simple observation and asked for their evaluation of them. The second group was presented with a set of results that were obtained by controlling variables, and asked to draw a conclusion and to evaluate it. Students’ responses were classified into two categories. Some students rejected their own preconceptions and introduced a new explanatory model when contradictory results were presented, and others denied the results for the simple reason that they conflicted with their preconceptions, or only modified a protective belt without changing their core of preconceptions. We found that this distribution of responses varied considerably by inquiry skill type. For the results obtained by controlling variables, almost all students accepted them and changed their preconceptions, but for the results obtained by simple observation, fifty-five percent of students preserved their own preconceptions by denying the contradictory results or modifying the protective belt.