Microcomputers and continuing motivation

This study investigated the effects of medium of instructional practice, task difficulty, and gender on continuing motivation. A total of 139 fifth and sixth graders with previous computer experience completed an initial drill and practice learning task in one of the two media formats (computer or paper/pencil) at either a hard or easy difficulty level. Subjects' choice of practice medium for a second learning task was the measure of continuing motivation. Sixty-seven of the 69 computer subjects (97 percent) chose to return to practice on the computer, whereas only one of 70 paper/pencil subjects (one percent) chose to return to practice in the paper/pencil form. p<.001. Questionnaire data indicated that computer subjects also evaluated their own performance on the instructional practice task significantly more highly, reported the task to be significantly more interesting and easier, and had a greater desire to study more of the subject matter.     

Minority status,sex, and school psychological services

The sex and minority status of 355 students referred for psychological services from a random sample of schools in an urban school system were examined in relation to the frequency of referral, type of problem, and the nature of subsequent psychological services. A significantly higher percentage of both minority students and males were referred for psychological services; males were referred approximately twice as often as females. When referral problems were categorized as either academic or behavior problems, there were no differences between majority and minority students nor between males and females on percentage referred for each type of problem. Parent contacts were made significantly more often for majority students and for females, and recommendations to parents of majority students were more varied than those made to parents of minority students. Special Education resource services were recommended significantly more often for minority students. Possible reasons and implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Construction of Knowledge in Classroom Talk

Social interaction is important for the development of knowledge (M. Chapman, 1991 Chapman, M. 1991. “The epistemic triangle: Operative and communicative components of cognitive competence.”. In Criteria for competence: Controversies in the conceptualization and assessment of children's abilities Edited by: Chandler, M. and Chapman, M. 209–228. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.  [Google Scholar]). Social interaction, however, takes many forms, and J. Piaget (1977/1995) proposed that the construction of knowledge is facilitated in cooperative as opposed to constraining relationships. These views of knowledge development were drawn on in a study of classroom talk in higher education, namely in 2 first- and 2 fourth-year college and university psychology classes. Classroom talk was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed following conversation analytic (H. Sacks, 1992 Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation Vol. 1–2, Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.  [Google Scholar]) and social pragmatic (W. Turnbull, 2003 Turnbull, W. 2003. Language in action: Psychological models of conversation. New York, NY: Psychology Press..  [Google Scholar]) approaches. Examination of how cooperation and constraint were constituted in the corpus was based on N. Mercer's (1995, 2000) categorization of different ways of making reasoning manifest, namely exploratory talk, or the joint negotiation of ideas; disputational talk, or the competitive negotiation of knowledge claims; and cumulative talk, or the uncritical addition of knowledge claims. Analysis focused on the sequential structures of classroom talk in and through which reasoning is achieved. Analysis revealed that most fourth-year talk was exploratory, whereas most first-year talk was disputational or cumulative.     

Foregone earnings of college students in the U.S., 1970 and 1979: a microanalytic approach

Foregone earnings are defined as the difference between a student's potential and actual income. Data from the 1970 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) of Youths Labor Market Experience and the 1979 Youths Cohort of the NLS are employed to estimate foregone earnings of male college students. Estimates are provided by full- and parttime enrollments, and by attendance level (lower-division and upper division undergraduates and graduate-professional). The results are compared to estimates provided by other authors.     

Missing Voices: African American School Psychologists’ Perspectives on Increasing Professional Diversity

Since the mid 1960s, there has been a noticeable decrease in the percentage of African American educators. Although a sizeable literature is dedicated to understanding how to recruit African American teachers, fewer studies focus on recruiting and retaining African American school psychologists. Therefore, this exploratory qualitative study investigated factors important to African American school psychologists when they were selecting a school psychology graduate program to attend and their perspectives on strategies that might facilitate an increase in their numbers. Four major themes of Location, Raise Awareness, Recruit, and Support emerged. Based on the results, a three-prong approach for recruiting African Americans into school psychology graduate education is presented.