Predictors of discrepancies between informants’ ratings of preschool-aged children's behavior: An examination of ethnicity,child characteristics,and family functioning

The present study examined predictors of discrepancies between mothers’, fathers’, and teachers’ ratings of 3-year-old children's hyperactivity, attention problems, and aggression. Participants were families of 196 3-year-old children who took part in child and family assessments. Ethnicity was one of the most consistent predictors of discrepancies. African American mothers and fathers were more likely to rate their children's hyperactivity, attention problems, and aggression lower than teachers. In contrast, Latina mothers were more likely to rate their children as more hyperactive and inattentive than teachers. ADHD/ODD diagnoses, parental depression, number of children, and children's pre-academic skills were also predictive of discrepancies for some measures for some informants. These findings provide insight into factors that may contribute to informant discrepancies in ratings of preschool children.     

Teaching introductory statistics to blind students

The challenges of learning statistics, particularly distributions and their characteristics, can be potentially monumental for vision impaired and blind students. The authors provide some practical advice for teaching these students.     

Validity of student self-reported ratings of learning

This study examined the relationship between individual student self-reported ratings of progress on relevant learning objectives and performance on exams administered during a college course. Across three sections of the same course taught by a single instructor, 188 students rated themselves at the end of the course on two objectives identified by the instructor as either essential or important. They also rated themselves on 10 other objectives the instructor identified as having minor or no importance. Self-ratings on course-relevant objectives correlated significantly and positively with four out of five exams and the course total, whereas ratings on irrelevant objectives did not. Students who rated their progress as either exceptional or substantial generally performed better on course examinations than those who rated their progress as moderate or less. These findings support the validity of student self-reported ratings of learning.     

Peer Tutoring: An Aid to Individual Instruction

In this article, the author describes a personal teaching experience that led her to incorporate improvisational drama into her English classroom. The author describes justifications for implementing drama into the classroom as well as the possible benefits gained by teachers and students. Also included are several improvisational dramatic activities and instructions for incorporating them into the English curriculum. Using drama helped to develop confidence, community, and content knowledge in the middle school classroom.     

Career counselling issues in Canadian counsellor education

The purpose of this project was to examine the preparation of counsellors, with particular concern for the development of competencies in career guidance. It used a structured interview to survey faculty members involved in counsellor education in faculties of education offering graduate programs. It found increased awareness of career development in terms of increase in the number of graduate courses offered. It also found emphasis upon the consullative role for counsellors, vocational theories of Super and Holland, and continued interest in the development of career counselling competencies.Submitted to the Ninth International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling,Submitted to the Ninth International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling,     

Extrapolation of serial stimulus patterns by rats

This experiment determined if rats could extrapolate a familiar serial sequence of diminishing food quantities by accurately anticipating a novel quantity added to the end of the sequence. In 13 days of training, rats ran in a straight runway to obtain quantities of food pellets presented in sequential order. A strongly monotonic group received repetitions of a formally simple pattern of 14-7-3-1 pellets of food, while weakly monotonic and nonmonotonic groups received formally more complex 14-5-5-1 and 14-3-7-1 patterns, respectively. In subsequent transfer, a 0-pellet quantity was added to each pattern, thus extending pattern length to five elements. Results of the very first pattern repetition containing the added 0-pellet element indicated that rats in the strongly monotonic condition, but not in the others, anticipated the reduced quantity before actually experiencing it. This result supports a cognitive, rule-learning hypothesis for serial learning by rats.     

Assessing young children's social concept development

A number of questions regarding the nature of social concept development in young children were investigated in this study. In an earlier study, a social concept picture-sorting task was developed to obtain normative data on young children's social concept development. For this replication study, a larger more heterogeneous sample was used consisting of 64 kindergarten and 65 first grade public school students from lower to upper middle-class socioeconomic levels. Profile analysis was used to compare grades, sex, and racial groups. All three variables had a significant impact on performance. Significant differences in difficulty were found among the nine concepts measured. Three of the most difficult concepts (family-not family, those who protect us, and past-present) are commonly included in early childhood curriculum. These results suggest that the level of concept development needs to be considered in planning social studies curriculum and instruction for young children.     

Differentiating emotionally impaired from socially maladjusted students

This paper addresses the issue of whether serious emotional disturbance in children can be distinguished reliably from social maladjustment. Educational authorities at the local, state, and federal levels have expressed concern over the inclusion of socially maladjusted youths in special education programs for the seriously emotionally disturbed. For multidisciplinary teams to enforce the exclusionary clause of PL 94–142, which denies socially maladjusted students services for the seriously emotionally impaired unless it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed, practitioners must be able to distinguish between these two conditions. The literature on taxonomies of childhood psychopathology was reviewed and a set of items based on research and clinical experience was developed to differentiate between these two groups. These items were submitted to eight school psychologists. Eleven items met the criterion of agreement by at least six of the eight psychologists. Implications for school psychologists are discussed.