How do teachers perceive cheating students? Beliefs about cues to deception and detection accuracy in the educational field

The present study explores how well teacher trainees can detect liars. Moreover, a new method was applied to investigate beliefs that teacher trainees hold about liars. The results indicate that, overall, teacher trainees were not better than chance in detecting true and invented stories. Generally, participants reported to have used only a few cues for their credibility judgment, where most of these self-reported cues are stereotypical and invalid deception cues (e.g., gaze aversion). Further analyses with a Brunswikian lens model showed that the self-reported cues were good predictors of their credibility judgment but only poorly predictive for the objective truth/lie status of the statement. Practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Class size and achievement in introductory economics: Evidence from the TUCE III data

Does class size affect achievement in introductory economics? This paper addresses this question using a national economic education data base (TUCE III), consolidating these data so that each observation represents a single class rather than a single student, thereby alleviating several estimation problems that plague empirical work in this area. Our results indicate that class size does not affect student achievement, and further, that class characteristics over which instructors or department chairs have control also do not influence achievement. These results are remarkably robust to different specifications, so long as students' Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are used to control for ability and account is taken of whether the TUCE test result counted toward the students' final grade.     

Making connections in mathematics

Math textbooks, which usually represent the mathematics curriculum, seem to be linked to the poor math performance of U.S. students. The major shortcomings of math textbooks are described in this article; then an alternative perspective is offered (the sameness analysis), along with research conducted with students with learning disabilities and at-risk students. The article then presents a detailed illustration of the sameness analysis--how to teach the addition-subtraction and multiplication-division relationships and their interrelationships in the context of solving word problems in mathematics.