Does Student Language Ability Affect the Assessment of Teacher Language Ability?

This article arises from an investigation into the classroom language assessment (CLA) component of the Hong Kong English language benchmark test for lower secondary (Grades 7–9) teachers of English as a second language (ESL). After some background to the benchmarking initiative in Hong Kong and to the CLA test, the article describes a small-scale study into the effect of student levels of ability on grades awarded to teachers working in schools with differing ability intakes. In the study, a group of ESL teachers were videotaped teaching ESL classes at two different student ability levels, with the two sets of videos assessed by trained CLA assessors. Results indicate that, although there is some variety in the grade awarded to the two different classes taught, variation in grades may well be attributable to individual teacher performance rather than to external factors such as the ability levels of the students being taught. The grades awarded were generally consistent, irrespective of whether classes of high-ability students or low-ability students were being taught.     

A Review of Career Development Research in Australia and New Zealand from 1995–2000

This paper provides a review of career development research studies publishedin Australia and New Zealand between 1995 and2000. The review has grouped the literatureaccording to the categories of careerdevelopment theory, career developmentconstructs, career-related decision-making,gender, cultural comparisons, career programsfor children and training programs for adults.These groupings were created to correspond withthe main focus of each study.     

Childhood peer status as predictor of midadolescence peer situation and social adjustment

This longitudinal study examined the relation between stable sociometric status among same‐gender classmates at age 10–11 and peer situation and social adjustment at age 15. Rejected, popular, and average groups of both genders (N = 90) were selected from a representative school sample. Rejected boys and girls preserved their low position among same‐gender class peers at age 15. They also had low status among cross‐gender class peers. Furthermore, rejected children perceived their peer situation as worse compared to other children. As expected, adolescents had most of their peers in ordinary or conventional peer categories, that is, same‐age peers, class peers, and other school peers. Rejected participants had a smaller number of conventional peers than other children in some categories (same‐age and school peers). There were, however, no peer‐status differences in nonconventional peer categories, like different‐age and antisocial peers; neither were there differences in own antisocial tendencies. Antisocial deviancy seems to be more common among boys and their peers than among girls. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 745–757, 2005.     

Summation and configuration between and within sensory modalities in classical conditioning of the rabbit

Three experiments examined “atomistic” and “configurai” processes in stimulus compounding using the rabbit’s conditioned nictitating membrane response. Two conditioned stimuli (CSs) were trained separately and then tested together in a compound. Animals trained with CSs from different modalities—namely, tone and light—showed summation in both acquisition and extinction. That is, the probability of a response to the compound could be predicted by the statistical sum of responding to the CSs. In contrast, animals trained with CSs from the auditory modality, tone and noise, showed a level of responding to the tone + noise compound that was the same as that of the CSs, well under the level predicted by the statistical sum of responding to the CSs. In conclusion, atomistic processes appear to predominate in cross-modal compounding. Configurai processes may occur during compounding within the auditory modality, but atomistic alternatives—namely, common elements and selective attention hypotheses—may be able to explain the results.