Predicting predictability: The influence of student and institutional characteristics on the prediction of grades

This study examined the statistical and institutional influences on the prediction of first-year college grades, using data from College Board validity studies and the College Handbook. The criterion was the size of the multiple correlation between academic predictors and first-year college grades. The independent variables were the statistical data of the validity study and college characteristics. In general, the extent of the variation of the academic ability of the students was positively related to the size of the multiple correlation, and the heterogeneity of the programs and experience of college negatively related. Further analyses investigated the characteristics that were associated with the greater or lesser efficiency of the predictors (SAT Verbal and Mathematical and high school grades.)     

Audience Size and Trait Anxiety Effects Upon State Anxiety and Motor Performance

This study was designed to investigate how a personal disposition factor (trait anxiety) and a situational factor (number of observers) affect state anxiety and motor performance. Thirty high and 30 low trait-anxious (Spielberger's STAI) female subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: alone, two evaluative observers, five or six evaluative observers. Subjects performed 30 massed 10-sec trials on the pursuit rotor task under their assigned treatment conditions and then completed the STAI state anxiety scale. Trait anxiety significantly affected both state anxiety and pursuit rotor performance but no audience main effects or interaction effects were statistically significant. The results were interpreted as supporting some predictions from Spielberger's trait-state anxiety theory while contradicting others.     

Influence of Decision-Making on Attitudes,Creativity, Motor Skills and Self-Concept in Elementary Children

Abstract

Attitudes, creativity, self-concept and motor skills were measured to determine the influence of decision-making on elementary children. Three groups of children (N = 208) were tested, one group was taught with the teacher dominating all classroom decisions, another group was encouraged to share in the decision-making, and a third group served as a control. Data were collected immediately before and after an eight-week instructional period. MANCOVA indicated that the two treatment groups had significantly higher scores than did the control group, and the shared decision-making group scored significantly higher than the teacher dominated group on measures of creativity, motor skills and self-concept. A 2 (treatment) × 2 (sex) × 5 (grade) ANOVA revealed significantly more positive attitude scores for children allowed to make decisions regarding their learning. Further, Pearson product-moment correlation showed the tested variables to be independent measures of a child's development.     

Using developmental evaluation as a design thinking tool for curriculum innovation in professional higher education

This paper argues for the use of ‘developmental’ evaluation as a design-based research tool for sustainable curriculum innovation in professional higher education. Professional education is multi-faceted and complex with diverse views from researchers, professional practitioners, employers and the world of politics leaving little consensus about the nature of educational ‘problems’, let alone educational ‘solutions’. Developmental evaluation is an emerging approach to evaluating innovations and/or organisations that are in a continuous state of change; it asks the evaluators to not simply appraise a final design, but to work with designers through processes of rapid reconnaissance, mapping the territory and emergent modelling. This paper provides an account of how the adoption of the dispositions and approaches of developmental evaluation increased the trustworthiness of decision-making in the design of a new post-graduate teacher education degree in Australia. The principles of developmental evaluation as a design thinking approach have application in other complex curriculum settings.     

Effects of food primes on the operant behavior of nondeprived rats

After rats had been trained to press a lever for food reward, experimenter-initiated food “primes” increased the likelihood of subsequent responding during periods in which the subjects were nondeprived. No such priming effects were found after presentation of a stimulus that had previously been paired with food. In other experiments, nonreinforced leverpresses, as well as subthreshold components of the leverpress response (e.g., forepaw raising), were also found to be enhanced by food primes. Taken together with other reports in the literature, the present findings are consistent with a “motivational aftereffects” interpretation of priming, and also with the notion that all stimuli which possess reinforcing properties possess priming properties as well.     

Multicultural Children’s Literature as a Context for Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance in Urban Schools

This article reports on a teacher-research study that used multicultural texts as a context for teaching mathematics for cultural relevance during an elementary mathematics methods course. The results of the study reveal that 28 % (5 out of 18) of the teacher candidates (TCs) chose books that were culturally contextual or culturally amenable. However, 89 % (16 out of 18) of the TCs chose texts that were mathematically robust or mathematically peripheral. Four focal TCs were selected to examine how they used the texts with children to teach mathematics concepts. Math lessons fostered academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Overall, the results of the study are mixed. We conclude that some TCs’ choice of texts may reflect indifference, passive resistance, low self-efficacy, school culture, and mixed messages from the teacher–researcher. Additional studies that include follow-up interviews and classroom observations are needed to determine the factors that influence TCs’ selections of multicultural texts and their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy with students.     

National and international policies for preservation

Abstract

The aim of the study is to measure the effects of information resources and services of a regional information resources centre (NR CRI Library, Umudike), on the work of agricultural scientists within South Eastern Nigeria. The adequacy and relevance of resources and services were also examined.

One hundred and forty-one copies of a structured, self-administered questionnaire were sent to 140 scientists and one Head Librarian. Ninety-nine (70%) were retrieved and analysed. Data were also generated from intervies and a randomly selected sample, from documentary sources and observations. Analysis focused on library use, resources, services, effects of use on performance, relevance and adequacy of resources and services. Simple analytical tools such as graphs, charts and tables were used to elucidate library use, operations, benefits, effects of use on performance, relevance and adequacy of resources and services.

Results showed that research objective (20%) was the most common reason why scientists sought information and that information “effectively improved” the work of 73% of scientists. It also showed that among six other technical determinants that are essential for agricultural research, the importance attributed to the contribution of information to the success of research varied between groups of scientists. This trend was also observed in the amount of work achieved by scientists with the use information. The highest (20·4%) showed respondents who accepted that 31–40% of their research work was achieved with the use of information. The     

Executive Branch (and Library of Congress)

WALT DISNEY'S FANTASIA by John Culhane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983---$35.00)

The Wisconsin/Warner Brothers Screenplay series has produced two new volumes this year (both University of Wisconsin Press, 1983 for $17.50/6.95)

THREE SCREEN COMEDIES by Samson Raphaelson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983---$19.95)

FILM PLOTS by Leonard J. Leff (Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1983---no price given)

NAPOLEON: ABEL GANCE'S CLASSIC FILM by Kevin Brownlow (New York: Knopf, 1983---$14.95)

FIFTY YEARS OF SERIAL THRILLS by Roy Kinnard (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983---$15.00)

FILM AND RADIO PROPAGANDA IN WORLD WAR II edited by K.R.M. Short (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983---$23.95)

STRANGERS IN PARADISE: THE HOLLYWOOD EMIGRES, 1933-1950 by John Russell Taylor (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983---$16.95)

THE JAMES BOND FILMS: A BEHIND THE SCE/413S HISTORY by Steven Jay Rubin (New York: Crown Books, 1983---$9.95)

THE UNIVERSAL STORY by Clive Hirschorn (New York: Crown, 1983---$35.00)

STAR MYTHS: SHOW-BUSINESS BIOGRAPHIES ON FILM by Robert Milton Miller (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1983---$27.50)

REDISCOVERING FRENCH FILM edited by Mary Lea Bandy (distributed by New York Graphic Society Books through Little, Brown of Boston, 1983---$15.00 paper)     

Recruitment rhetoric in brochures advertising the all volunteer force

Solutions to Army personnel problems are of critical importance. Personnel issues continue to be problematic in a number of areas including: recruit intelligence level, careerist motivation of recruits, and the maintenance of trained, quality careerists in the all volunteer force (AVF). High attrition of skilled personnel is not related only to pay scale; pride in service, as well as intrinsic rewards may also relate to the retention and attraction of career‐motivated soldiers. This study analyzed the inducements offered and demands made of potential volunteers in brochures advertising the AVF. Most of the appeals in such brochures focused on instrumental rewards available to potential recruits, while few appeals featured traditional intrinsic satisfactions of military service as a motive for joining the AVF. The advertising strategy presently used in AVF brochures may explain in part why poor retention of skilled careerists continues to be one of its most severe problems. Recommendations for structuring future appeals are offered based on the findings.