The relationship between research self-efficacy,research disposition and publication output

The study had two main aims: (i) to develop a model incorporating research self-efficacy and research disposition as predictors of publication output; and (ii) to assess the fit and robustness of this model to dichotomous groups based on gender, academic qualifications and rank. Data were drawn from a survey of lecturers (n = 331) working in two large Australian universities. The survey response rate was 33.6% and the lecturers were affiliated with a diverse range of research disciplines. Well-fitting measurement models for both research self-efficacy and disposition were produced using AMOS. However, a structural model which included these two measurement models would not satisfactorily fit the full sample. Subsequent testing yielded acceptable results when separate analyses employing the group variables of gender, academic qualifications and rank were undertaken. The model with rank offered the best fit of the data and, across all models, research self-efficacy proved to be the most important predictor of output. The results of the study provide an understanding of the scope and nature of research self-efficacy and, in addition, contribute to knowledge about the factors that underlie research disposition. As a consequence, the results have implications for career development programmes designed to foster research skills and further research. Additionally, the results point to some possible interventions aimed to boost research endeavour and output.     

Supplementation of urban home visitation with a series of group meetings for parents and infants: results of a “real-world” randomized, controlled trial

Objective: Home visitation has been shown to be effective in reducing rates of child maltreatment and in enhancing psychosocial outcomes in children and their parents. Even when available, however, it is underutilized by parents in some urban settings. We tested a supplemental 10-session group intervention for its ability to increase active participation in home visitation, enhance the quality of caregiving behavior of parents, and improve social developmental outcome in children.Method: A randomized controlled design was utilized, involving two separate cohorts of parents of 3- to 18-month old infants, totaling 148 parent-child dyads. The intervention focused on practical experience in promoting parent-infant attachment relationships.Results: At 6 months follow-up, there was a substantial increase in the proportion of intervention group parents participating in home visitation, compared to parents in the control group (Fisher’s exact p = .008). Parents in the intervention group exhibited a trend for improvement in their capacity to appropriately interpret infants’ emotional cues (p = .08), independent of the effects of home visitation itself. Attrition in both the treatment and control groups was inversely associated with income and level of education.Conclusions: Group meetings may constitute an effective means of engaging stressed urban families in home visitation.     

Early Childhood Education and Care for Children with Disabilities: Facilitating Inclusive Practice*

In this case study, a co-operative inquiry process was used to facilitate the expansion of inclusive early childhood education and care practices in a rural community in the Midwest. A university and a community researcher first engaged in interviews and site visits, during which they learned how a three-member inclusion team of early care and education professionals initiated changes in practice from self-contained to inclusive special education and therapy. Key practices included responding to families’ priorities, changing roles, and providing integrated services and support for children’s successful transitions into Kindergarten. The second part of the research consisted of action planning during focus groups and community meetings, which resulted in social recognition from the school district, technical assistance through state improvement grant funding, and better preschool options for young children with disabilities. *We gratefully acknowledge partial funding of this research by the Dean's Office at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and State Improvement Grant funding by the Department of Public Instruction.     

Teacher adaptation to flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how...     

A survey of pre-service primary teachers' experiences of science in schools

In 1990, a large proportion of third year primary trainee teachers at Victoria College had observed or taught very few or no science lessons during the first two years of their course. The students felt that a lack of content knowledge, a crowded school curriculum, and problems associated with managing resources and equipment, were the main factors contributing to the low level of science being taught in schools. By the end of their third year significantly more students had taught science than after the second year. There was also a change in approach to teaching science with more practical activities being included than previously. The science method unit taught to the students in the third year of their course contributed to this increase. The students considered the hands-on activities in class to have been the most effective aspect of the unit in their preparation for the teaching of primary science. Specializations: children's learning in science, primary teacher education. Specializations: student understanding of biology, evaluation of formal and informal educational settings. Specializations: gender, science and technology, environmental education. Specializations: children's learning in science, language and science.     

Tracking of the expected time to reinforcement in temporal conditioning procedures

In one experiment, the rate and pattern of responding (head entry into the food cup) under different distributions of intervals between food deliveries were examined. Separate groups of rats received fixed-time (45, 90, 180, or 360 sec), random-time (45, 90, 180, or 360 sec), or tandem fixed-time (45 or 90 sec) random-time (45 or 90 sec) schedules of reinforcement. Schedule type affected the pattern of responding as a function of time, whereas mean interval duration affected the mean rate of responding. Responses occurred in bouts with characteristics that were invariant across conditions. Packet theory, which assumes that the momentary probability of bout occurrence is negatively related to the conditional expected time remaining until the next reinforcer, accurately predicted global and local measures of responding. The success of the model advances the prediction of multiple measures of responding across different types of time-based schedules.     

Chinese Students’ Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help

In this study 1,453 Chinese high school and college students’ attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help and factors contributing to attitude differences were examined. Results revealed that Chinese students possessed generally positive attitudes and their attitudes were significantly associated with gender, prior counseling contact and prior knowledge about counseling and psychology. Previous help-seeking behavior for a major problem was predictive of respondent attitudes. Students with a broad range of help-seeking preferences had more positive attitudes than students with a narrower range. Students who sought help from parents or teachers perceived counseling more positively than students not seeking such help; this result was more significant for high school students. College students’ attitudes differed more in the area of whether or not to seek help. In addition, family structure was related to two dimensions of attitudes toward help seeking—interpersonal openness and stigma tolerance, but not to attitudes toward seeking psychological help.     

One Model or Two? Sentence Verification in Children and Adults

We employed the sentence‐picture verification paradigm to ask whether children are more likely than adults to construct unitary representations of ambiguous sentences. Six kinds of sentence were presented with the two kinds of inherently ambiguous sentences being: “There are crosses either above or below the line” and “There are crosses above [below] the line”. These sentences are inherently ambiguous because they afford both ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’ readings, the readings being determined by whether subjects judge a picture with crosses both above and below a line to be true of the sentences. In Experiment 1, which had a sentence‐picture order, and in Experiment 2, which had a picture‐sentence order, the verification reaction‐time and the true/false judgement data together suggested that the younger subjects were more likely to construct unitary representations for the ambiguous sentences. Our strongest evidence for this claim was that children are heavily biased towards an inclusive reading of disjunction. Analysis of the sentence reading times in Experiments 1 and 3 suggested that children, unlike adults, may be deferring the construction of a mental model of the disjunctive sentence until the picture arrives.