Psychometric Characteristics of the Revised Procrastination Inventory

The Procrastination Inventory developed for use with doctoral students in clinical psychology was modified for use with ABD students and doctoral graduates in a College of Education. The original Procrastination Inventory contained 43 items with 11 subscales. The structure of the revised measure was analyzed both through factor and Rasch analyses and three subscales that were more generalized were found instead of the eleven originally posited. The three subscales were: (1) procrastination, 20 items, alpha = .88, (2) perfectionism, 9 items, alpha = .64, and (3) graduate school comfort, 6 items, alpha = .59. Eight items were deleted after Rasch and factor analyses, resulting in a 35-item scale. Validity was demonstrated by the measure's ability to predict dissertation completion and through correlations with related measures. The Procrastination Inventory is useful in the study of attrition from doctoral programs, particularly at the dissertation stage.     

Expert and preservice secondary teachers’ competencies for noticing student thinking about modelling

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This study examined how expert and novice (preservice) teachers solved mathematical modelling tasks as well as how they noticed written artifacts of student...     

Talent development,work habits,and career exploration of Chinese middle‐school adolescents: development of the Career and Talent Development Self‐Efficacy Scale

This article describes the development of an instrument – the Career and Talent Development Self‐Efficacy Scale (CTD‐SES) – for assessing students’ self‐efficacy in applying life skills essential for personal talent development, acquisition of positive work habits, and career exploration. In Study 1, data were obtained from a large sample of Chinese middle‐school students (N=15,113) in Grades 7–9 in Hong Kong. The CTD‐SES is an 18‐item questionnaire with subscales containing items that address students’ orientations toward developing their own talents, acquiring and applying positive work habits, and exploring their career possibilities. Evidence is provided for internal consistency, temporal stability, and factor structure of the CTD‐SES. Goodness of fit statistics provided support for a three‐primary‐factor‐plus‐higher‐factor model, and this solution was used in the statistical analyses. The data also indicated that students with plans for university study reported significantly higher scores than those without on all three domains of career and talent development. In Study 2 (N=308) Grade 10 high‐ability students’ scores in CTD‐SES were correlated with scores in career decision self‐efficacy and academic performance. The development and validation of CTD‐SES is the first step toward investigating career exploration, work habits, and talent development among Asian middle‐school adolescents.     

Academic risk factors and deficits of learned hopelessness: a longitudinal study of Hong Kong secondary school students

The aim of the present study is to explore a causal model of academic achievement and learning‐related personal variables by testing the nature of relationships between learned hopelessness, its risk factors and hopelessness deficits as proposed in major theories in this area. The model investigates affective–motivational characteristics of students such as prior academic failures, academic attributional style, self‐efficacy, thoughts about intelligence, school values, learned hopelessness, self‐esteem, learning strategy effectiveness and academic achievement, and the relationships among them. A sample of 741 Hong Kong secondary students completed a series of scales over a school year. As expected, prior achievement was the best predictor of subsequent achievement. The next best predictors were perceived learning difficulties and learned hopelessness. This in turn leads to disengagement from schooling and students taking on most responsibility for their failing. Recommendations for teachers and schools to ameliorate these beliefs may redress the move towards hopelessness.     

Reflections on the prospects of the evolution of the structure of education systems

In 1965, Raymond Poignant published in Paris, on the initiative of the European Institute of University Studies, a work entitledEnseignement dans les Pays du Marché Commun. This work, which was subsequently translated and published in English and German has become a classic of its kind. The initial idea was to compare the structures and relative degrees of development of the educational systems in the European Economic Community (EEC) countries, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R., in order to see how school and university systems in the EEC countries were adapting to the most pressing human, social, democratic and economic requirements of the modern world. This idea originated in the apprehension that, because of the strength of their long educational traditions, the EEC countries might find it more difficult than others to make the necessary adjustments. The conclusions of this initial work in many respects confirmed this apprehension and contributed, at the time, to the development taking place in European educational systems.Under an agreement between IIEP and the European Cultural Foundation, Raymond Poignant is to publish a new work entitledL'Enseignement dans les Pays Industrialisés (Education in the Industrialized Countries), which to some extent carries on from the first but is motivated by other preoccupations.In this second work, which is set in the general context of the studies undertaken by the European Cultural Foundation on European education in the year 2000, the point is not so much to emphasize the quantitative and qualitative differences still encountered in the educational systems of the eleven countries under consideration—Japan and Sweden having been added to the original sample—as to show up some of the most characteristic trends common to their development during the last two decades or the trends of development in the most advanced countries, trends which, by the year 2000, a date so distant and yet so close at hand, may or should develop more rapidly or indeed become general.The author takes the changes noted since 1950 in the eleven countries considered, which he sees as being of some indicative value for the future, and outlines, in conclusion, the directions in which he feels they should continue in the three decades between now and the year 2000. He points out the forces of resistance of every kind which, in the short term, slow down the transformation of educational structures in the various European countries. He also emphasizes the decisive influence which the trend towards a levelling-out in the attitudes of different social groups towards secondary and higher education is likely to have on the dynamics of the development of European educational systems, of which he describes both the uncertainties and the most likely prospects.The European Cultural Foundation and the Nijhoff Publishing House have kindly given their permission for publication in the reviewProspects of a long extract from the conclusions of this work, which concerns future changes in the structure of European educational systems.Maître des requêtesin the Conseil d'État. Rapporteur of the Commission for Educational Planning for the Third and then the Fourth Plan in France (1957–61; 1962–65). Main publications: Education and Development in Western Europe, the United States and the U.S.S.R. (1969); Les Plans de Développement et la Planification Économique et Sociale (1967); Educational planning in the U.S.S.R. (co-author; 1968).