Directing an APA-approved school psychology program: Reasons,responsibilities, benefits

Directors of American Psychological Association (APA)-approved school psychology programs were surveyed to determine what responsibilities and benefits attend their role as training director; they also were asked to identify what they liked about serving in the training director role. Of 42 possible respondents, 33 (79%) returned usable questionnaires. Several responsibilities that all or virtually all of the training directors engaged in were identified (e.g., end-of-year APA report preparation); many respondents (61%) received release time from a class, but otherwise any benefits they received were few; and several important, motivating reasons (e.g., contributing to the future of school psychology) for functioning as a training director were identified. The implications of these findings for school psychology programs are briefly discussed.     

Where have all the skeptics gone?: Patterns of new age beliefs and anti-scientific attitudes in preservice primary teachers

Is belief in the paranormal alive and well within preservice teachers? In this survey 232 undergraduates (including 202 preservice primary teachers) were asked to react to a series of eight statements reflecting paranormal New Age beliefs rated earlier by a faculty panel as “totally unbelievable.” Overall, the students' modal response was expressed as “no particular opinion,” although for five of the eight items the modal respónse was “slightly believable.” It was found that only four students within the sample consistently rejected all eight statements. The frequency of ‘believers’ outnumbered the ‘skeptics’ in relation to three items (beliefs in UFOs, psychic seances, and Nostradamus). New Age factor scores were not significantly related to undergraduate faculty or year level, to holding anti-scientific beliefs or to a measure of TV-viewing, and did not correlate significantly with the personality scale Need for Cognition. Females evidenced higher New Age scores than males, but attitudes to science were unrelated to gender.     

Changing the Learning Environment to Enhance Explaining and Understanding in a Year 12 Chemistry Classroom

Internationally there is concern in relation to the traditional learning environments evident in many science classrooms and the levels of understanding of science developed by students in such environments. Further, students have generally been found to be poor in relation to thinking in terms of models or theories and in terms of evidence to support their theories. The majority of research on classroom environments has focused on characterising the learning environment in classrooms rather than monitoring changes to a class's or an individual's perceptions to their learning environments as a consequence of interventions. This study reports an attempt to change the learning environment in a classroom and documents changes in participants' perceptions of their learning environments and the corresponding changes in a teacher's and her students' perceptions of their reasoning and understanding that such changes facilitated. A community of learners in which students and teachers began to understand the processes and the value of reasoning in terms of theories and evidence was developed as a result of the involvement of the researchers with the teacher and her class of students. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Student's interaction with computer representations: Analysis of discourse in laboratory groups

Language use in student laboratory groups makes apparent students' conceptions in science, their interpretation of the activity or task, and the negotiation of the roles of the members. This article reports on a methodological approach to analyze student discourse systematically. Four Grade 12 lab groups working on microcomputer-based laboratories (MBL) are the focus of the study. The MBL experiences were used to help students link oscillatory motion to graphical representations. Study of student discourse reveals the role the computer plays in the group context and the ways that this context is shaped by the computer. Developing a better understanding of the role of the computer in student conversations suggests ways to fruitfully construct contexts for learning physics. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Further negative findings on facilitated communication

To date, most studies of the efficacy of Facilitated Communication (FC) have been hampered by small samples, limited experience of the subjects with the FC, and diagnostically narrow samples. The present study has a comparatively large sample, and the subjects each had a minimum of one year's experience using FC. Diagnoses of the subjects were also arrayed across a broad spectrum. Pictorial stimuli that had been used as classroom teaching materials were presented to each subject and facilitator under three different conditions of five trials each. Responses were rated by independent judges who were not aware of the stimuli. Support for the communicative value of FC was not found.     

Gifted underachievement within a self-regulated learning framework: Proposing a task-dependent model to guide early identification and intervention

Current theoretical and operational definitions of underachievement require that students show sustained suppressed academic achievement. Yet, early detection may allow for effective intervention before underachievement becomes a chronic issue. While existing identification procedures were not designed to detect underachievement before low academic performance occurs, the integration of self-regulated learning (SRL) into these practices may promote earlier identification and intervention. This conceptual paper (a) anchors gifted underachievement within Zimmerman's SRL model, (b) examines existing gifted literature investigating SRL components to demonstrate the benefits of applying an SRL model, and (c) proposes a comprehensive measurement and intervention technique to capture important motivational variables at the task level. By measuring SRL processes and underachievement at a task-specific level, we can target interventions to specific needs, address underachievement before it becomes a persistent problem, and help learners reach their academic potential.     

The Impact of After-School Peer Contact on Early Adolescent Externalizing Problems Is Moderated by Parental Monitoring, Perceived Neighborhood Safety, and Prior Adjustment

Unsupervised peer contact in the after-school hours was examined as a risk factor in the development of externalizing problems in a longitudinal sample of early adolescents. Parental monitoring, neighborhood safety, and adolescents' preexisting behavioral problems were considered as possible moderators of the risk relation. Interviews with mothers provided information on monitoring, neighborhood safety, and demographics. Early adolescent (ages 12-13 years) after-school time use was assessed via a telephone interview in grade 6 (N = 438); amount of time spent with peers when no adult was present was tabulated. Teacher ratings of externalizing behavior problems were collected in grades 6 and 7. Unsupervised peer contact, lack of neighborhood safety, and low monitoring incrementally predicted grade 7 externalizing problems, after controlling for family background factors and grade 6 problems. The greatest risk was for those unsupervised adolescents living in low-monitoring homes and comparatively unsafe neighborhoods. The significant relation between unsupervised peer contact and problem behavior in grade 7 held only for those adolescents who already were high in problem behavior in grade 6. These findings point to the need to consider individual, family, and neighborhood factors in evaluating risks associated with young adolescents' after-school care experiences.     

Applying Standardized Testing to Home-Based Education Programs: Reasonable or Customary?

The author seeks to identify sources of current misutilization of standardized tests in assessing the quality of home-based educational programs and notes some limitations of current Instruments to perform such assessments. Me suggests that both new instruments and the cooperation of concerned groups will be needed in the pursuit of increased educational alternatives, excellence, and accountability.