Life Experiences among Urban Adolescents: Examining the Role of Context

Interest in the influence of context on the psychosocial development of adolescents led to the examination of neighborhood effects on the experience of adolescent life stress. Because of concerns regarding the population and ecological validity of existing measures of adolescent life events, the research group developed a scale for the measurement of life events among urban adolescents based on data from focus group interviews in the community of interest. Investigators utilized three strategies to examine the impact of neighborhood on adolescents' perceptions of life stress in a sample of 114 adolescents (mean age = 15). Results indicated that life stress in the peer domain varied by the adolescent's neighborhood of residence. In addition, family/community stress was linearly related to neighborhood indices of economic resources.     

Developing conceptual frameworks for creativity, ICT and teacher education

This paper presents the first phase of a study in teacher education, which explored how a conceptual framework for creativity with information and communication technology (ICT) might be developed and expressed in professional development for primary education pre-service and newly qualified teachers. The Creativity and Professional Development Project (C&PD) involved 16 education ICT specialists in the final stage of their BA in an English University. They participated in the project to investigate their classroom practice in the use of ICT to promote creativity in the making of digital video movies, and to reflect upon the development of their pedagogy with ICT in primary classrooms. The analysis focuses on the student teachers’ experience of engaging in creative activities to prepare, teach and evaluate a school-based project, and identified themes of their understandings and personal experience of creativity, the contribution of ICT, and their reflections on professional development. This analysis raises the issue of designing learning experiences, which promote and support creativity with ICT in the context of teacher learning. A conceptual framework to describe creative practices with ICT in teacher education was developed from the study.     

Multiple‐choice and true/false tests: myths and misapprehensions

Examiners seeking guidance on multiple‐choice and true/false tests are likely to encounter various faulty or questionable ideas. Twelve of these are discussed in detail, having to do mainly with the effects on test reliability of test length, guessing and scoring method (i.e. number‐right scoring or negative marking). Some misunderstandings could be based on evidence from tests that were badly written or administered, while others may have arisen through the misinterpretation of reliability coefficients. The usefulness of item response theory in the analysis of academic test items is briefly dismissed.     

新千年的挑战:生物心理社会医学模式

疾病的生物心理社会模式是基于细胞、组织、器官、人际关系以及环境影响等多种因素相互作用的一种构想。在新千年中 ,人们最关心的是行为、环境、心理和社会因素在促进疾病的恢复、保持心情愉快以及抵抗疾病中的作用。应付压力机制与社会、行为因素密切相关 ,该机制可以很清楚地说明外部环境压力和由某种心理反应而引发疾病的情形。压力和消极心理及社会因素对身体和细胞的免疫状态和功能方面都将产生影响。未来几十年我们不但要关注行为和心理社会因素通过神经生理机制对健康状况产生影响 ,而且更有必要揭示有利于健康和人体机能最佳发展的生物心理社会医学等综合因素。此外 ,还应推进初级预防科学。     

Hypothetico-deductive reasoning skill and concept acquisition: Testing a constructivist hypothesis

This study tested the constructivist hypothesis that the acquisition of domain-specific conceptual knowledge (declarative knowledge) requires use of general procedural knowledge. More specifically, it was hypothesized that use of a general pattern of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is necessary for the acquisition of novel domain-specific concepts. To test this hypothesis 314 high school biology and chemistry students were first tested to determine whether or not they were skilled in the use of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Based on this test, students were classified as reflective, transitional, or intuitive thinkers. All students were then presented with a series of four concept-acquisition tasks. It was predicted that reflective (hypothetico-deductive) thinkers would acquire the concepts while intuitive (empirico-inductive) thinkers would not. Transitional thinkers were expected to be partially successful. These predictions were confirmed as skill in hypothetico-deductive reasoning (developmental level), but not age, was highly correlated with performance on the concept acquisition tasks (X² = 71.14, p < 0.00001). This result was interpreted to be supportive of the constructivist hypothesis.