The Development of Measures of Individual Differences in Self-Regulatory Control and Their Relationship to Academic Performance

Two studies are reported describing the development and validation of the Strategic Flexibility Questionnaire (SFQ): a self-report instrument aimed at eliciting students’ beliefs about the need for, and conditional nature of, self-regulatory control over learning. In Study 1, 281 first-year university education students completed a 40-item pilot questionnaire. Factor analysis of responses revealed a 21-item instrument indicating three types of control beliefs: adaptive executive control, inflexible executive control, and irresolute executive control. In Study 2, the predictive validity of these conceptions was tested against the academic performance of 105 third-year university education students. Results indicated that students reporting adaptive executive control beliefs were more successful academically, while those students reporting inflexible or irresolute control beliefs were significantly less successful academically.     

Chaos theory, informational needs, and natural disasters

This study applies chaos theory to a system-wide analysis of crisis communication in a natural disaster. Specifically, we analyze crisis communication during the 1997 Red River Valley flood in Minnesota and North Dakota. This flood, among the worst in modern American history, consumed entire metropolitan areas, displacing thousands of people. The conditions and decisions leading to the disaster, and the subsequent reactions are retraced. Communication related to river crest predictions (fractals), the shock at the magnitude of the crisis (cosmology episode), novel forms of reorganizing (self-organization), and agencies that aided in establishing a renewed order (strange attractors) are evaluated. Ultimately, we argue that preexisting sensemaking structures favoring rationalized, traditional views of a complex system led officials to make inappropriately unequivocal predictions and ultimately diminished the effectiveness of the region's crisis communication and planning.     

East Meets West in Assessment Development: Western Technical Assistance to Eastern Needs. Part III. Reform of an Examination System: Shoulder to Shoulder in the Polish SMART Project

This is Part III of a three part series describing the consultancy and training demands that are encountered in technical assistance projects in Central and Eastern Europe. Part I dealt with strategic issues for a successful delivery of "Western Technical Assistance to Eastern Needs." Part II highlighted project management and co-operation aspects in delivering support to the Romanian Assessment and Examination Service. In this part, we address training of Polish subject experts who were preparing to take on responsibility for a decentralized and strongly innovative final exam, the Matura.     

PUBLIC AND ELITE ATTITUDES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

This paper puts the environment into perspective. Politiciansand commentators see the environment as yesterday's issue, forgettingthat the core of environmental activists is still double thelevel of just five years ago. International comparisons stretchingfrom Poland to New Zealand are made, examining the public'senvironmental behavior, attitudes and values. Using Great Britainas a case study, detailed comparisons are made between the attitudesof the general public with journalists, the financial community,captains of industry, and Members of Parliament and the latterthen compared with Members of the European Parliament. The publicis demanding action by companies and by governments on environmentalissues and has little faith in either to take corrective action.