Measuring attitudes to science: Unidimensionality and internal consistency revisited

Summated ratings attitude scales commonly consist of numerous items whose scores are summed to yield a total score. An assumption underlying this technique is that the items in the scale reflect a common construct. If this is not met, the procedure produces uninterpretable data. Although this psychometric principle has been known for a long time, numerous studies in the literature demonstrate a neglect of it. Some make no attempt to conceptualise the construct to be measured; others conceptualise the construct but then ignore the possibility that it may be multidimensional; still others contain evidence indicating that the construct is multidimensional and then proceed to ignore that evidence. A possible contributor to the confusion is the misunderstanding of the related yet distinct concepts of internal consistency and unidimensionality. This paper presents examples of poor and good instrument design, in the hope that clarification of the issues might make a difference in the future.     

Does calibration reduce variability in the assessment of accounting learning outcomes?

Reliable, consistent assessment process that produces comparable assessment grades between assessors and institutions is a core activity and an ongoing challenge with which universities have failed to come to terms. In this paper, we report results from an experiment that tests the impact of an intervention designed to reduce grader variability and develop a shared understanding of national threshold learning standards by a cohort of reviewers. The intervention involved consensus moderation of samples of accounting students’ work, with a focus on three research questions. First, what is the quantifiable difference in grader variability on the assessment of learning outcomes in ‘application skills’ and ‘judgement’? Second, does participation in the workshops lead to reduced disparity in the assessment of the students’ learning outcomes in ‘application skills’ and ‘judgement’? Third, does participation in the workshops lead to greater confidence by reviewers in their ability to assess students’ skills in application skills and judgement? Our findings suggest consensus moderation does reduce variability across graders and also builds grader confidence.     

A First Course in Mind, Brain, and Education

ABSTRACT— We describe what may well be the first course devoted explicitly to the topic of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE). In the course, students examine four central topics (literacy, numeracy, emotion/motivation, and conceptual change) through the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and education. We describe the pedagogical tools we use to develop the skills critical for synthesizing information across the disciplines associated with MBE.     

Children's Comparisons of the Recency of Two Events from the Past Year

Research on memory for time has been limited by the difficulty of disentangling several of the fundamentally different processes that contribute to a chronological sense of the past. This study used a developmental approach to isolate one of these processes, impressions of distances in the past. Large samples of children between 3 and 12 years were asked to judge which was longer ago, their birthday or Christmas (and, in one study, Halloween and Thanksgiving). Even children under 6 years of age were able to discriminate the recency of their birthday and Christmas with great accuracy when the events were widely separated and one was within the past several months. The ability to discriminate recency on these scales appears to be a basic property of human memory that changes little with development. Other information about the locations of the events and their relative times of occurrence could only be interpreted correctly by children older than 9 years.     

谁拥有智力?

传统的智力理论狭窄化甚至曲解了人类智力 ,但概念边界的过度扩展又使得智力概念失去真义。智力是单一的还是由多种能力构成 ?智力是否由遗传决定 ?智力的任何成分是否都可以准确测量 ?这三个尚未解决的问题主导着关于智力问题的讨论。在作者看来 ,这些问题已超出了学术讨论的范畴。     

Oral History and Teachers’ Professional Practice: a wartime turning point?

This exploratory article has a two‐fold aim. In the first place, it seeks to investigate changing patterns of teacher‐pupil relationships in the twentieth century through the lens of the professional lives and pedagogical practices of classroom teachers themselves. Such an investigation is engaged through the application of oral history methods. An unexpected result of a succession of oral history interviews has been the identification, by former teachers themselves, of wartime evacuation as a significant turning point in the development of teacher‐pupil relationships. The second aim of the article is to relate the findings of oral history interviews to those which emerge from documentary and secondary sources. In this way, the particular strengths of oral history methods for the investigation of past pedagogical practice are assessed.     

Teaching Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) in a Supply Chain Context: A Paper Football In‐Class Activity

We develop a single‐class period learning game for the Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) improvement cycle. The experiential activity walks teams through the PDSA problem‐solving process as they create paper American footballs and improve their performance using each step of the cycle. The game is one of the first to focus on PDSA. Key benefits include increased student attention, engagement, and learning. Empirical tests show that participant pre‐ and post‐test scores regarding their understanding of each phase of PDSA improved 21.2% after completing the game. Additionally, the treatment group performed 16.6% higher than the control group. In participant perception questions, 85% of participants felt the game was more effective than lecture or reading, 93% felt the game was fun, 95% felt the game improved their understanding of PDSA, and 98% felt the game was engaging.     

Previous traumatic birth: an impetus for requested cesarean birth

This paper addresses the meaningfulness of the childbearing experience and how a traumatic occurrence can affect women for years into the future. Every woman deserves to have a fulfilling childbearing experience, even if it may be different from the one she imagined. This paper examines the phenomenon of previous traumatic birth and its potential effects on choices during subsequent pregnancies. Discussion includes how childbirth educators can assist women in healing from past birth traumas and preventing them from recurring.