A look at student cheating in college science classes

To gain an appreciation of the collusion rate of college students in science classes, over three hundred undergraduates from western Pennsylvania were sampled for their attitudes toward different forms of cheating. The science students were sampled from several different divisions within the university. The survey used in the study was developed by Baird (1980) and holds a reliability coefficient of 89%. The results of the survey indicate that eighty three percent of the respondents had cheated in science sometime in their lives. The vast majority (86%) of the pupils had shared homework answers with classmates and most (81%) had told little lies to teachers or administrators to avoid getting in trouble. Fewer, but still the majority (75%), of the students admitted to have copied phrases directly out of glossaries, encyclopedias, journals or reference books turning it in as their own work. Most students (80%) had also used crib notes or written science terms on their shoes, wrists or other parts of their body to get by minor quizzes at times in their biology course. Over three quarters of the students admitted to cheating on large exams and major projects. When the results of the study are compared to students surveyed with the same instrument a decade ago, it is revealed that the cheating among students is growing. Alarmingly, when the results of the 1993 study were compared to the one in 1980, it was discovered that student collusion had increased in all of the categories in the questionnaire.     

Judgment‐Based Scoring by Teachers as Professional Development: Distinguishing Promises from Proof

The engagement of teachers as raters to score constructed response items on assessments of student learning is widely claimed to be a valuable vehicle for professional development. This paper examines the evidence behind those claims from several sources, including research and reports over the past two decades, information from a dozen state educational agencies regarding past and ongoing involvement of teachers in scoring‐related activities as of 2001, and interviews with educators who served a decade or more ago for one state's innovative performance assessment program. That evidence reveals that the impact of scoring experience on teachers is more provisional and nuanced than has been suggested. The author identifies possible issues and implications associated with attempts to distill meaningful skills and knowledge from hand‐scoring training and practice, along with other forms of teacher involvement in assessment development and implementation. The paper concludes with a series of research questions that—based on current and proposed practice for the coming decade—seem to the author to require the most immediate attention.     

Assessing mentoring in organizations: an evaluation of commercial mentoring instruments

The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the types of instruments available for assessing and improving mentoring in organizations. Extensive review of the psychological, business and medical literature was conducted to identify commercially published, practitioner‐oriented instruments. All of the instruments that were identified – including the Alleman mentoring activities questionnaire, Mentoring in the moment, Mentoring skills assessment, and Principles of adult mentoring scale – are evaluated herein. Each instrument’s target audience, raters, subscales, response options, psychometric properties, and relative strengths and weaknesses are described. Although these instruments are reported to be used extensively, evidence of their validity is not always available. This review presents information that, in combination with first‐hand inspection of the instruments, should enable practitioners to differentiate between instruments that may be a fit for their needs from those that are not. Furthermore, it may introduce academic readers to instruments that are not covered in the scholarly literature in spite of their common use for non‐research purposes.     

The rights of children and young people under special educational needs legislation in England: an inclusive agenda?

ABSTRACT

In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1), and making reference to the international framework of children’s and disabled persons’ rights, we present an analysis of the (mostly professional) viewpoints gathered and what they tell us about the progress towards the realisation of children and young people’s autonomy and agency in this field.     

Preschool children's reasoning about ability

Young children's reasoning about ability was investigated among 155 preschoolers (M = 4 years, 10 months) across 3 studies. Results suggest that preschoolers are sensitive to mental state information when making judgments about another child's ability: They judged a child who finds a task easy to be smarter than one who finds the same task hard. Systematic patterns of errors on recall tasks suggest that preschoolers perceive positive correlations between (a) exerting effort and experiencing academic success, and (b) being nice and having high academic ability. Results from a comparison group of forty 9- to 10-year-olds (M = 9 years, 10 months) suggest that the preschool findings generally reflect emerging patterns of reasoning about ability that persist into later childhood, but that the perceived correlations between high effort and academic outcomes and between social and academic traits diminish with age.     

International perceptions across the sea: Patterns in Japanese young adults

The international perceptions of Japanese young adults were explored in 172 professional education students in two Tokyo colleges. They classified 30 nations according to their “current” and “future” affinity to Japan. Little difference was detected in the Q-sorts between institutions arid sexes, while the “current” and “future” sorts correlated .96 with each other. In cluster analyses, many two-nation units (e.g., Czechoslovakia-Yugoslavia) were found to be the building blocks for the overall pattern. The total configuration consisted of three broad groups: mostly Western European nations, problematical nations (China, Russia, Israel, Egypt, etc.), and remote and neutral nations. Structurally, the results were similar to those for American young adults, but the contents were different. The notion of cultural metastereotypes thus received tentative support.     

Girls in science — An evaluation of one school's approach to the gender bias in science

Conclusions As the pilot project has only been in operation for one semester there are no profound statements that can be made. What we have at present is the base information for comparison of all data over the duration of the project. Cross tabulation of the data to date has begun. However it should be re-iterated here that there appears to be a lack of understanding by the parents' as to the reason for the all-girls classes at the school and that this situation may be due to the fact that in this school community we have the typical sex-stereotyping roles and attitudes existing. The big question is, Will this intervention strategy of single-sex science classes be effective in altering the girls views about what is appropriate for them to study or follow as a career?     

Age-Related Differences in Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance among Female Masters Swimmers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine age-related differences in muscular strength and muscular endurance among 73 female masters swimmers aged 24 to 71 years. Each subject was assessed on measures of body size, grip strength, peak isokinetic torque of shoulder and knee flexion and extension, and endurance of shoulder and knee movements. Although swim training appears to have resulted in higher strength values for these swimmers than for less active women, an age-related decline in muscular strength values was nevertheless apparent. The results fail to reveal a similar age-related trend for muscular endurance, suggesting that swim training influences muscular endurance more than muscular strength among adult women.     

Methods of performance analysis in team invasion sports: A systematic review

ABSTRACT

The objective of this review was to systematically describe the traditional and contemporary data capture and analytic methods employed in performance analysis research in team invasion sports, evaluate the practicality of these methods, and formulate practical recommendations on methods for analysing tactics and strategies in team invasion sports. A systematic search of the databases SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE and PubMed was performed. Keywords addressed performance analysis methods and team invasion sports, with all other disciplines of sports science excluded. A total of 537 articles were included in the review and six main themes of research identified. Themes included game actions, dynamic game actions, movement patterns, collective team behaviours, social network analysis and game styles. Performance analysis research has predominantly focused on identifying key performance indicators related to success by analysing differences in game actions between successful and less successful teams. However, these measures are outcome-focused and only provide limited insight into winning team’s strategy. Team invasion sports are now viewed as dynamic, complex systems with opposing teams as interacting parts. Strategies and tactics should be analysed using a holistic process-orientated approach by recording dynamic actions, collective team behaviours and passing networks, and viewing them in game styles.