Gender Issues in Counselor Education: Current Status and Challenges

This article examines the status of gender studies in counseling programs and the ethical significance for integrating gender within curricula.     

MEASURING SUBSKILLS OF READING: INTERCORRELATIONS BETWEEN STANDARDIZED READING TESTS, TEACHERS' RATINGS, AND READING SPECIALISTS' RATINGS

The study examined the convergent and discriminant validity of three methods for assessing three subskills of reading: word analysis, vocabulary, and comprehension. These three subskills were measured by teachers' ratings, specialists' ratings, and standardized tests. Correlations of all three skills, each measured by the three different methods, were studied by the multi-trait-multimethod procedure. Although there was some support for convergent validity, the study revealed a total lack of discriminant validity for any of the three subskills of reading.     

The SUNY Assessment Initiative: Initial campus and system perspectives

The State University of New York (SUNY) is in the process of implementing a remarkably ambitious and collegial system-wide assessment of general education and academic majors across its 64 campuses. The SUNY Assessment Initiative is founded upon a balanced view of assessment as both accountability and improvement as well as the utilization of best assessment practices. Another fundamental component is the critical role of faculty governance in the assessment of student learning outcomes, at the campus and system levels. This paper explains the rationale underlying the SUNY Assessment Initiative, describes specific procedures and processes involved in its implementation, and provides a preliminary report on its status.     

School Counselors' Participation in Continuing Education Activities

All certified school counselors in Wisconsin were surveyed in regard to their participation in a variety of professional development activities during a 12-month period. Results reveal that while many counselors were actively involved in such activities, others were only minimally so and some completely uninvolved. The latter tended to be older males with several years of counseling experience. Implications for maintaining counselor effectiveness in a changing society are discussed.     

Standardized testing and the construction of governable persons

While debates over standardized testing are ubiquitous, there has been relatively little consideration of how today's standardized testing practices have arisen. The current study provides a chronology of standardized testing within Alberta, Canada. Starting from prior work by Foucault and others on ‘governmentality’, we propose that the movement to standardized testing be viewed as part of a larger societal movement toward techniques of government that operate indirectly and at a distance. These techniques of government seek to ‘manage’ populations through the use of measurement tools and numerical calculations. We suggest that, although these techniques are directed toward populations, they also have specific effects on individual students, parents, teachers, and other participants in the education system. In particular, we contend that standardized testing programmes, by rendering the participants visible and subjecting them to public scrutiny, contribute to the construction of governable persons.     

In Memory of Michael Pressley: A Role Model for 21st-Century Educational Psychologists

This article honors the contributions of Michael Pressley and examines 5 roles that were critical to his work as an educational psychologist: teacher, scholar, critic, builder, and mentor. We draw on Michael's life to illustrate how he carried out each of these roles and propose that educational psychologists in higher education in the new millennium should assume all 5 of these roles throughout the majority of their careers.     

An Atlas Has More Than One Map: A Reply to Our Commentators

Current trends in research on motivation in the classroom are based on theories that focus on the individual's intrapsychological traits or his or her cognitive and/or affective functioning. In contrast to this individualistic perspective, social constructivist theory provides a framework for conceptualizing motivation as socially negotiated by the participants in the classroom. In such a conceptualization, motivation is inseparable from the instructional process and the classroom environment. The culturally determined joint activity between student and social context results in an internal state of interest and cognitive and affective engagement, and motivated behaviors, both of which can be considered cultural norms. Implications of this perspective for understanding motivation, classroom instruction, and research are discussed.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CEQ RATINGS AND INSTRUCTOR'S RANK, CLASS SIZE, AND COURSE LEVEL

A study was conducted to determine if the tendency for faculty members of higher rank to receive the highest ratings on the Illinois Course Evaluation Questionnaire (CEQ) remained when variables such as class size and course level were taken into account. The relationship between CEQ ratings and instructor's rank, class size, and level of course was examined by means of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Dependent variables were the six subscales of the CEQ. As hypothesized there were no significant differences in ratings assigned by students in small (1-20 students), medium (21-40 students), and large (over 40 students) classes, or received by teaching assistants, instructors, and assistant, associate, and full professors. Highly significant differences, however, were found in ratings assigned by students in freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and graduate level courses. In addition, significant size by level and size by rank interaction effects were found. Discriminant functions computed for effects found to be significant yielded information concerning the extent and direction of these significant differences.