The Average Expectable Environment Is Not Good Enough: A Response to Scarr

I take the position, contrary to Scarr's, that the details of socialization patterns are crucial to an understanding of normal and deviant development. Considerable evidence has accrued to justify the claim that what normal parents do or fail to do crucially affects their children's development. Research is cited to support the argument that better than "good enough" parenting optimizes the development of both normal and vulnerable children, and that parents' belief in their own effectiveness further enhances their caregiving, whereas causal attributions that assign responsibility for child outcomes to genetic factors that parents cannot change undermine parents' belief in their own effectiveness. The strong conclusions Scarr draws from heritability analyses to support her thesis that genotypes drive experiences overlook their inherent limitations.     

Summer Scientific Research for Teachers: The Experience and its Effect

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

The structure of research training in England

Over the past twenty-five years, the UK government has implemented reforms in doctoral level provision, led by the Research Councils and especially the Economic and Social Research Council. These have emphasised training in research methodology and also, recently, other employment-related skills. This article considers the drivers of these initiatives (demands for accountability and ‘new public management’) and some of their consequences (including the steering of research in particular directions and a neglect of the scholarship produced and also doctoral studies as a form of lifelong learning). It also examines some of the universities' responses in the form of diversification of doctoral studies, the institution of graduate schools, and the establishment of a National Council for Graduate Education. Throughout these reforms, the diversity of doctoral students and their concerns have largely been neglected.     

Effects of social and individual school self-concepts on school engagement during adolescence

European Journal of Psychology of Education - While school self-concept is an important facilitator of a student’s school engagement, previous studies rarely investigated whether it may also...     

Psychology's Contribution to Understanding and Managing Bullying within Schools

This paper investigates the extent to which psychological theory and research has contributed to how bullying is managed within schools. Teachers' awareness of the behaviours that constitute bullying, gender differences leading to identification difficulties, and low levels of reporting are discussed as plausible reasons for teachers' low intervention rates. Pupils' attitudes towards and responses to bullying are examined within the contexts of self‐efficacy, self‐acceptance and level of problem‐solving skill. Subsequent anti‐bullying interventions focusing on these aspects are explored and the importance of a whole‐school approach emphasised.     

Politics and quality in administrator evaluation

The evaluation of administrators is still in a primitive stage, despite the fact that many recent publications have addressed the topic. Two aspects of the evaluation process—internal institutional politics and quality, not quantity, as a dimension of both the evaluation process itself and the performance of administrators—have not received the attention they must if administrator evaluation is to be effective. A case study of administrator evaluation at The University of Toledo, a process grounded in an awareness of internal political realities and an understanding of the need to incorporate qualitative dimensions, has important implications for practitioners and theoreticians.Presented at the Twenty-First Annual Forum of The Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis, May 1981.     

The Search for Solutions to Truancy and Other Forms of School Absenteeism

This article explores current thinking and practice on approaches to attendance and truancy in schools. The author argues that despite a wide and sometimes, innovative range of initiatives and approaches there is little evidence that attendance rates within a lot of individual schools are improving. He explores possible reasons for this and offers some ideas for consideration at a national level which might lead to even further and better practice within schools and, amongst the caring professions in order to reduce, combat and prevent truancy and other forms of non–attendance from their existing levels. He argues that this is a difficult and complex task but has some constructive recommendations to make for work at national and local level.     

DNA sequence representation by trianders and determinative degree of nucleotides

INTRODUCTION Genomic DNA sequence analysis using wide range of statistical methods (Torney et al., 1999; Bulmer, 1987; Luo et al., 1998; Nieselt-Struwe, 1997; Fickett et al., 1992; Buldyrev et al., 1998; Azbel, 1995) and various symmetry investigations (Findley et al., 1982; Hornos and Hornos, 1993; Bashford et al., 1997; Bhry et al., 1998; Forger and Sachse, 1998; Frappat et al., 1998) is an extremely important tool for extracting hidden information on the dynamic process of evolu…