Fun with numbers: Alternative models for predicting salary levels

The increasing awareness and concern with equity issues in higher education, along with the escalating litigation, has prompted institutions to undertake salary prediction studies. Four prediction models (built on a males only and total sample) were compared: (1) entering all variables, (2) excluding rank and tenure, (3) using predicted rank and tenure, and (4) using only objective variables. Models were tested using all permanent full-time faculty at a large midwestern university. Using predicted rank and tenure was the most suitable for equity studies. Including all variables yielded the best results for explaining/predicting reward systems. The other two models did not appear appropriate for either purpose. The males only sample consistently produced the largest bias effects. Institutions considering a salary prediction study should find these outcomes helpful in determining appropriate analytical strategies.     

The motion variable in procedural learning

Conclusions Differences in performance of a procedural task, attributable to motion, are identified with the putting together of a new motor response. No reliable difference was shown between motion and still sequences in the overall procedural sequence of steps. The use of animation arrows to direct attention and to show the direction of motion did not help learning. Motion does not appear to function as a cue focusing attention upon the direction of movement or critical elements of the display. The results of the present studies support the recommendations of Allen and Weintraub (1968). They suggest that the use of motion in a display is definitely indicated when the particular content to be learned consists of the movement itself and its characteristics, or where the content is enhanced and differentiated by the cues provided in the action of the movement. Until the bases for differential individual needs for motion can be determined, displays that provide motion are best used wherever procedural tasks requiring motions new to the student are taught. The research reported in this paper was performed at HumRRO Division No. 2, Fort Knox, Kentucky, under Department of the Army Contract with HumRRO. The contents of this paper do not necessarily reflect official opinions or policies of the Department of the Army.     

Computer-Assisted Writing of Achievement Test Items: Toward a Future Technology

Five appproaches to writing test items with computer assistance are descibed. The authors propose a scheme for modeling knowledge by a set of structures and outline a system for implementing it.     

School-age child care: Having fun while learning to think

A family had a picnic at the beach. Ninety years later you come along and begin to dig in the very same spot. What might you find? What would it tell you about the people? Strange questions? Not for the third-graders participating in the Archeology Club!     

Teachers' perspective: Developing and implementing an sts curriculum

This article explores science TEACHERS' perceptions of and consequent decisions about the development and implementation of a nontraditional science curriculum. It is a case-study analysis that examines the perceptions of 14 secondary teachers of a model science/technology/society (STS) curriculum designed to promote scientific literacy. Although the TEACHERS' decisions varied on whether to accept, alter, or reject the STS curriculum, they shared similar concerns about the development and implementation of this multidisciplinary curriculum. There existed a common set of five factors that the teachers believed to be critical, and that strongly affected their daily teaching decisions. This study offers insights into how science teachers perceive an STS curriculum, and the influence those perceptions have on their teaching decisions. It explores curricular issues from the frame of reference of teachers, the key factor in successfully implementing innovations.     

Teaching theory and applications together: An exploratory teaching program, in the liberal arts

An exploratory approach to teaching and learning is described. The program incorporates real-world projects as class activities, which dramatically alters the traditional motivational structure of both students and professors. The approach is based on the principle that learning is most effective when the goals of instructors and students are congruent. The literature indicates that the traditional liberal arts classroom format makes such congruence unlikely. In this program, the key element to harmonizing student-teacher goals and objectives involves the inclusion of outside clients. They provide projects to be completed by student teams assisted by their professors and adjunct experts. In the process students gain opportunities to learn by doing and assume greater responsibility for course organization. Professors engage their undergraduate students in a manner more like graduate students and become more focused on educational outcomes than on lecture content. We conclude by discussing the major successes and problems incurred in attempting to integrate such a program into a standard liberal arts curriculum.Professor Wichman received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from California State University, Long Beach and his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School. He was on the founding faculties of Delta College in Michigan and California State University, San Bernardino. Currently he is Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and Director of the Aerospace Psychology Laboratory. Trained in both social and physiological psychology, he conducts research on the effects of stress on aviators and the performance of astronauts while in orbit. As a Sloan Foundation Fellow he worked on the design of the space station. He is author of the bookHuman Factors in the Design of Spacecraft and is currently designing passenger compartments for a new rocket being developed by McDonnell Aerospace. Dr. Wichman holds commercial pilot and flight instructor rating and teaches flying as an avocation. Professor Teeples is Boswell Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College, where he has taught since 1970, serving as department chairperson from 1977–1981 and again from 1992–1995. He holds an M.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from UCLA, both in Economics. At the inception of Claremont McKennas' Practicum Program in 1991, he became its first Director and continues in this position. His published work includesProgram Budgeting for State and Local Government and a variety of econometric studies estimating cost functions for urban water delivery systems and the cost implications of private versus public ownership of water utilities.     

Transition Education,Student Contestation and the Production of Meaning: possibilities and limitations of resistance theories

One of the major developments within the sociology of education is the recovery of the role of human agency within what had previously been considered to be determining structures. This article looks at one aspect of such agency, namely the meaning production engaged in by a group of largely working‐class students within transition programmes in three secondary schools in New Zealand. Their contestual industry in receiving, reinterpreting, re‐creating and rejecting meanings provides valid spaces in which critical and conscientising education can occur. It is argued, however, that this same activity hardly warrants the optimism evident in contemporary educational discourse relating progressive change at the micro‐level of the school to changes in the larger social formation. Some of the factors which subvert the transformative potential of contestual and resistant activity are therefore explored.     

Preference for fixed over variable access to food

Three pigeons pecked for food in a concurrent chain schedule. Pecks in one link of the concurrent chain resulted in a fixed duration of access to food, while pecks in the other link resulted in either no access to food or 8 sec of access to food. All three pigeons pecked more often in the initial link which resulted in the fixed duration of access to food, indicating preference for fixed over variable access to food. This result does not seem consistent with previous results showing preference for variable- over fixed-interval schedules. However, the results are consistent if preference is determined by differential weighting of reward values, and preference is independent of whether a reward is fixed or variable. This analysis suggests that previous results of fixed- vs. variable-reward studies cannot be used to argue that animals do not prefer information over uncertainty.     

Attention to semantic versus phonetic verbal attributes as a function of individual differences in arousal and learning strategy

It has been argued that deep processing of semantic information helps students to learn faster and perform better on classroom tests. Using paired associates tasks, it has been found that high arousal subjects make more errors when the response terms are phonetically similar. Subjects low on arousal make more errors when response words are semantically similar. If the encodings of semantic features are assumed to be “deeper” and more durable than the encodings of “shallow,” phonetic features, then studies have suggested that anxious students process shallowly and are thus at a disadvantage when learning information. The present study treats deep processing as a learning style and used the Synthesis—Analysis scale of the Inventory of Learning Processes to assess it. It is hypothesized that arousal would be negatively related to the learning style of deep processing. It is also hypothesized that the interaction obtained in earlier studies, i.e., greater susceptibility to semantic interference with low arousal and phonetic interference with high arousal, would occur only when Synthesis—Analysis scores are low. It is assumed that the habitual use of a deep processing strategy by students high on Synthesis—Analysis could counteract the limiting effect of arousal on cue utilization. The study provides support for both hypotheses.