CHANGING CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS OF THE ELDERLY

Many children have negative attitudes about older persons. This study used a pre‐posttest control group experimental design to investigate the effects of a guidance unit about older persons upon elementary school children in two schools. Significant results are reported. The experimental unit also proved effective for both boys and girls. Perceptions of children about the aging process and the elderly can be positively changed.     

Test Reliability at the Individual Level

Reliability has a long history as one of the key psychometric properties of a test. However, a given test might not measure people equally reliably. Test scores from some individuals might have considerably greater error than others. This study proposed two approaches using intraindividual variation to estimate test reliability for each person. A simulation study suggested that the parallel tests approach and the structural equation modeling approach recovered the simulated reliability coefficients. Then in an empirical study, where 45 females were measured daily on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) for 45 consecutive days, separate estimates of reliability were generated for each person. Results showed that reliability estimates of the PANAS varied substantially from person to person. The methods provided in this article apply to tests measuring changeable attributes and require repeated measures across time on each individual. This article also provides a set of parallel forms of PANAS.     

The cost structure of higher education in further education colleges in England

This paper examines the cost of the increased provision of higher education courses within further education colleges in England. We believe this to be the first attempt to fit a cost function specifically to the further education sector. Cost functions for a sample of 96 colleges over a 2-year period, from 2000 to 2002, are fitted using a panel data methodology as well as stochastic frontier analysis. We compare and contrast our findings with a sample of 959 US colleges. Our findings indicate that most further education colleges are able to benefit from economies of scale. Results from both methodologies suggest the presence of product-specific economies of scale, substantial ray economies of scale and indicate that higher education classroom-based courses, such as business studies, as well as vocational courses display substantial economies of scope.     

Estimating the value of national sporting success

The sporting success of athletes and national teams is associated with a feel-good-factor among the population. These positive social effects can be regarded as public goods that entail a certain value for the population. The value of public or non-market goods can be estimated using the contingent valuation method (CVM). A theoretical model is developed based on the consumption capital theory. This model explains the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for winning the 2010 Football World Cup as a function of sport-related and football-specific consumption capital as well as intangible and socio-economic factors. Within a survey of German citizens (n = 3049), the value of winning the 2010 Football World Cup is assessed using CVM. The model is tested using regression analyses to identify the significant determinants of WTP. The results reveal half of the respondents stated a WTP that amounted to €26 on average. The findings of a mixed-effects logistic as well as an alternative Tobit regression model show that intangible factors such as identification with the country and with the national team as well as individual and national importance of a good result significantly influence individuals’ WTP. Based on the findings of this study, it can be recommended that policy makers invest in national teams and athletes as national sporting success can generate a feel-good-factor among the population and make people happier. Additionally, it can impact on peoples’ perceptions and expectations about current and future economic situations which in turn determine macro-economic outcomes. Moreover, such estimations could be integrated into cost-benefit terms that are carried out for sport events.     

Telling Tales Out of School: The construction of parental literacy in school culture

ABSTRACT

This article examines practices and products of school culture: jokes, hallway conversations, home-school correspondence and interpersonal interactions between parents and teachers. These practices construct parents as functionally, but not critically, literate and serve to reproduce a dominant ideology which presumes a hierarchical relationship between teachers and parents with professional thought and practice superior to parents' in educational matters. Examples of parental and professional resistance to such disempowering constructions of parental literacies are offered to demonstrate possibilities for the development of a more just and literate community.     

Ethical reflections on becoming teachers

This study analyzes narratives written in a culminating graduate seminar on reflective practice by 36 new secondary teachers who were asked to consider their moral beliefs, moral values and system of ethics as they reflected on their recent student teaching experiences. The findings explore how the participants depicted their constructed moral identities and felt obligated to critically reflect on them, affirmed values that guided their practice, and desired to be role models. Implications include attending to novice teachers’ moral identity development, infusing moral language into teacher education and recognizing teachers’ moral purposes, introducing curriculum to cultivate moral imagination, and helping teachers to realize their potential as moral agents by preparing them to become moral educators. The study also suggests the need to allow for broader ethical and political conceptions of the moral dimensions of teaching.     

The effects of strategic counting instruction,with and without deliberate practice,on number combination skill among students with mathematics difficulties

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the effects of strategic counting instruction, with and without deliberate practice with those counting strategies, on number combination (NC) skill among students with mathematics difficulties (MD). Students (n = 150) were stratified on MD status (i.e., MD alone versus MD with reading difficulty) and site (proximal versus distal to the intervention developer) and then randomly assigned to control (no tutoring) or 1 of 2 variants of NC remediation. Both remediations were embedded in the same validated word-problem tutoring protocol (i.e., Pirate Math). In 1 variant, the focus on NCs was limited to a single lesson that taught strategic counting. In the other variant, 4–6 min of practice per session was added to the other variant. Tutoring occurred for 16 weeks, 3 sessions per week for 20–30 min per session. Strategic counting without deliberate practice produced superior NC fluency compared to control; however, strategic counting with deliberate practice effected superior NC fluency and transfer to procedural calculations compared with both competing conditions. Also, the efficacy of Pirate Math word-problem tutoring was replicated.