Overestimation Bias in Self-reported SAT Scores

The authors analyzed self-reported SAT scores and actual SAT scores for five different samples of college students (N = 650). Students overestimated their actual SAT scores by an average of 25 points (SD = 81, d = 0.31), with 10% under-reporting, 51% reporting accurately, and 39% over-reporting, indicating a systematic bias towards over-reporting. The amount of over-reporting was greater for lower-scoring than higher-scoring students, was greater for upper division than lower division students, and was equivalent for men and women. There was a strong correlation between self-reported and actual SAT scores (r = 0.82), indicating high validity of students’ memories of their scores. Results replicate previous findings (Kuncel, Credé, & Thomas, 2005) and are consistent with a motivated distortion hypothesis. Caution is suggested in using self-reported SAT scores in psychological research.

Assessment at the Intersection of Science and Literacy

The authors of this article, all of whom have been a part of this effort to assess argumentation in literacy-rich science curriculum, have struggled with our attempts to build 3 argument-related assessments—understanding, critiquing, and constructing arguments about scientific phenomena in both oral and written modes. Loosely affiliated with the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading Project at Lawrence Hall of Science, this effort focused on creating a suite of assessments as models for how middle school science teachers might create their own school-based, curriculum-embedded assessments of science. After reviewing the broad scope and insights derived from a 10-year history of assessments that operate at the intersection of science and literacy, we zoom in on 3 vexing but informative challenges they encountered—and addressed (if not resolved)—as they tried to assess the comprehension, critique, and construction of oral and written arguments.     

Secondary School Prospectuses and Educational Markets

This study examines the 1996 prospectuses of 59 of the 100 secondary schools whose 1991 prospectuses were reviewed in a previous paper (Knight, 1992). The intention is to consider the ways in which schools present themselves in the educational market‐place. It is shown that they take the business of marketing through prospectuses seriously, evidence being the more professional appearance that these brochures now have. While other changes are also noticed, the argument is that prospectuses tend to depict schools of all types in similar ways. An explanation for this is offered, drawing upon marketing and on game theories. On this analysis, beliefs that changes in educational policy will lead to increasing differentiation of provision is, at least in terms of image‐making, exaggerated. More striking than the evidence of diversity is the evidence that schools are busily managing their images in much the same ways.     

Wearing,speaking and shouting about sexism: developing arts-based interventions into sexism in the academy

This paper examines a project that developed humorous, irreverent and subversive arts-based interventions into sexism in the academy. Two workshops were run with women currently working in teacher education in Australian universities. The researchers worked with the participants collaboratively and in line with feminist practices and methodologies to develop interventions that were performed at a large multidisciplinary educational research conference. The paper outlines the origins of the project, the feminist scholarship that inspired it, the methodological framework as well as a discussion about three of the interventions and demonstrates that sexism both (re)produces structural disadvantage for women in higher education as well as being characterised by a set of micro practices that shape the everyday experiences of women in the academy. Although this research is set within an Australian context, the paper acknowledges that sexism is systemic within higher education across contexts.     

On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: A View Through the Lens of Transformative Learning

This article describes a graduate-level qualitative research course informed by transformational learning theory. It presents strategies an interdisciplinary team of instructors used to engage and support students as they entered and moved through the course. The strategies focused on creating a safe, supportive, learner-centered environment, fostering critical reflection, engaging in ongoing discourse, and focusing on the centrality of experience by situating cognition in the personal context of students' lives and the research process itself.