The new books on our shelves

Evaluation and Improvement of Teaching. By Charles W. Knudsen. Doubleday Doran &; Co.

Arithmetic for Everyday Life. By Robert Anderson, Teachers College, West Chester, Pa., and Shelton Phelps, George Peabody College for Teachers. Silver, Burdett &;Co.

Problems of the Teaching Personnel. By Dennis H. Cooke. Longmans, Green &; Co.

Intelligence—Its Manifestations and Measurement. By Paul L. Boynton, 1933. D. Appleton and Company. Pp. xi + 466.

Significant Contemporary Stories. Edited by Edith R. Mirrielees. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929. Pp. 376.

Stongs for the School Year for Junior and Senior High Schools. Compiled by George S. Dare. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1931. Pp. xvi + 191.

The Psychology of School Music Teaching. By James L. Mursell and Mabelleb Glenn. New York: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1931. Pp. v + 378.

The Courts and the Public Schools. By Newton Edwards. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1933. Pp. xvi + 591.

A Gestalt Completion Test. By Roy F. Street. New York City: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1931. Pp. in + 65.

College and Reference Library Yearbook. American Library Association, Chicago: American Library Association, 1931.

Public School Finance. By Homer P. Rainey. New York: The Century Co, 1929. Pp. xix + 385. (Century education series.)

Beyond the School. By Frank A. Rexford, Cham.es M. Smith, Sarah Lansuburg Seixin, and Paul F. Frabbito. New York: Henry Holt and Company 1933. Pp. xx + 409.

The Administration of Public High Schools Through Their Personnel. By Georgs A. Rice, Clinton C. Conrad, Paul Fleming. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933. Pp. x + 723.

Everyday Problems in Classroom Management. By Edwin J. Brown. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933. Pp. xv + 306.

Modern Solid Geometry. By John R. Clark and Arthur S. Otis. New York: World Book Company, 1932. Pp. xx + 171.

Junior Mathematics for Today—Book One. By William Betz. New York: Ginn and Company, 1933. Pp. x + 406.     

Attending to spatial locations: a developmental study

In 2 experiments, 7- and 8-year-old children and college students performed a letter-detection task in which reaction time was the dependent variable. Expectancy was manipulated by varying the probability the stimulus would appear at the center of an imaginary circle rather than along the perimeter. Although both age groups responded consistently faster to stimuli presented in expected locations than to stimuli presented in unexpected locations, this expectancy effect was larger for the children than it was for the college students. In a third experiment, these results were replicated using a luminance-detection task with 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and college students as subjects. It was concluded that children as well as adults are able to expand or contract the breadth of their attentional focus in accordance with task demands and that there is a developmental change in the efficiency with which a stimulus presented in an otherwise empty field can be located. Furthermore, it was suggested that children may be more disrupted by the occurrence of an unexpected event than adults are.     

The IDEA Model as a Best Practice for Effective Instructional Risk and Crisis Communication

This study presents the IDEA (internalization, distribution, explanation, action) model as an easy-to-use and situationally generalizable framework for quickly developing effective messages instructing people on how to protect themselves before and during high-risk events, crises, disasters, and other emergencies. The model consists of four elements: helping message recipients internalize the potential impact of the risk or crisis event, identifying appropriate channels and strategies for distributing the risk or crisis event messages, offering a brief and intelligible explanation of the nature of the risk or crisis, and providing specific self-protective action steps for people to take. The model may be used to design messages in any risk, crisis, or emergency context. Through a posttest-only quasi-experimental cross-sectional research experiment, this study measured the perceived message effectiveness, cognitive understanding, and behavioral intentions of those viewing a television news story about a crisis situation employing the IDEA model compared to those viewing a similar story replicating typical crisis event news stories delivered to general publics. This comparative examination revealed that the message designed according to the IDEA model was significantly more effective than the status quo message and resulted in greater behavioral intentions to engage in appropriate self-protective actions in the event of an acute risk or crisis situation. Strategies for implementing the model are also provided.     

An Examination of a Small‐Group Decoding Intervention for Struggling Readers: Comparing Accuracy and Automaticity Criteria

In this study, we compared methods to improve the decoding and reading fluency of struggling readers. Second‐grade poor readers were randomly assigned to one of the two practice conditions within a repeated reading intervention. Both interventions were in small groups, were 20–28 min long, took place 2–4 days per week, and consisted of phonemic awareness training, letter sound practice, and practice in word families. Students in the accuracy condition (n= 27) practiced each page until they reached 98 percent accuracy while students in the accuracy + automaticity condition (n= 29) practiced until they reached rate (30–90 cwpm) and accuracy criteria. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed no differences between practice conditions in decoding accuracy, reading comprehension, and grade‐level text reading fluency. Significant differences favoring the accuracy + automaticity group were found in measures of decoding automaticity.     

The brain and the US education system: Perpetuation of neuromyths

ABSTRACT

Misconceptions about the brain and its relation to education are widespread. This can lead to the implementation of ineffective methods and the waste of precious resources. To examine the extent of belief in neuromyths, a survey about the brain in education was conducted. Respondents (n = 169) came from special education (n = 83) and general education (n = 78), and included preservice teachers (n = 34), in-service teachers (n = 63), higher education faculty (n = 39), and educational leaders (n = 33). The survey contained 15 Myths and 18 Facts, and overall, participants were able to correctly identify approximately 66% of all the Facts. On the other hand, on average, respondents responded correctly for only one third of the Myths. The most commonly misidentified Myths were related to motor coordination exercises to improve literacy skills, the right brain-left brain myth, and learning styles. Higher education faculty were able to identify more Myths than any other group. Implications for teacher preparation and ongoing professional learning for teachers and educational leaders are discussed.     

Do 45% of College Students Lack Critical Thinking Skills? Revisiting a Central Conclusion of Academically Adrift

The educational literature, the popular press, and educated laypeople have all echoed a conclusion from the book Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (which has now become received wisdom), namely, that 45% of college students showed no significant gains in critical thinking skills. Similar results were reported by Pascarella, Blaich, Martin, and Hanson after the publication of Arum and Roksa's book in 2011. However, these authors' statistical tests were conducted incorrectly, and therefore this 45% finding is fundamentally untrue. We demonstrate that a correct statistical analysis would have found that far fewer students show significant gains in critical thinking. However, this does not reflect on student learning; instead, it reflects on how hard it is to find a statistically significant result when assessing student change on a student‐by‐student basis. This article discusses valid methods for testing the significance of gain scores of individual students.