The Roles of Intuition and Informants’ Expertise in Children's Epistemic Trust

This study examined how children's intuitions and informants’ expertise influence children's trust in informants’ claims. Three‐ to 8‐year‐olds (N = 192) watched videos in which experts (animal/biology experts or artifact/physics experts) made either intuitively plausible or counterintuitive claims about obscure animals or artifacts. Claims fell either within or beyond experts’ domains of expertise. Children of all ages were more trusting of claims made by informants with relevant, as opposed to irrelevant, expertise. Children also showed greater acceptance of intuitive rather than counterintuitive claims, a differentiation that increased with age as they developed firmer intuitions about what can ordinarily happen. In summary, children's trust in testimony depends on whether informants have the relevant expertise as well as on children's own developing intuitions.     

Has Motivational Interviewing Fallen into its Own Premature Focus Trap?

Since the initial conception of the behaviour change method Motivational Interviewing, there has been a shift evident in epistemological, methodological and practical applications, from an inductive, process and practitioner-focussed approach to that which is more deductive, research-outcome, and confirmatory-focussed. This paper highlights the conceptual and practical problems of adopting this approach, including the consequences of assessing the what (deductive outcome-focussed) at the expense of the how (inductively process-focussed). We encourage a return to an inductive, practitioner and client-focussed MI approach and propose the use of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Systems such as NVivo in research initiatives to support this aim.     

Strategies for Examining the Consequences of Assessment and Accountability Programs

This article addresses issues in evaluating the consequences of assessment programs that are developed for the purpose of holding schools accountable to state standards. After providing a brief review of research examining consequential evidence, a validation study to obtain consequential evidence for state assessment and accountability programs is proposed. The proposal includes a validity argument, a set of propositions that follow from the validity argument, a delineation of the consequential evidence needed, and a way to model the relationship between performance gains and school, principal, teacher, and student variables.     

Team-referent attributions among sport performers

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a team-referent attribution scale. Conducted over three studies, Study 1 modified items from McAuley, Duncan, and Russell's (1992) Causal Dimension Scale II by rewording items to reflect team attributions and adding one item per factor. This led to the development of a 16-item scale (Causal Dimension Scale-T, CDS-T). Study 2 tested competing models of attribution theory among a sample of 433 team sport players. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated strongest support for a four-factor model (robust comparative fit index = .961; root mean squared error of approximation = .054). Study 3 tested the predictive validity of the scale among a sample of 201 team players. Results indicated that winners reported more internal and stable attributions than losers. Further, performances perceived as successful were associated with stable attributions. The results of the study, therefore, suggest that the CDS-T provides a valid measure of team-referent attributions in sport.     

Generalizability and Validity of a Mathematics Performance Assessment

The QUASAR Cognitive Assessment Instrument (QCAI) is designed to measure program outcomes and growth in mathematics. It consists of a relatively large set of open-ended tasks that assess mathematical problem solving, reasoning, and communication at the middle-school grade levels. This study provides some evidence for the generalizability and validity of the assessment. The results from the generalizability studies indicate that the error due to raters is minimal, whereas there is considerable differential student performance across tasks. The dependability of grade level scores for absolute decision making is encouraging; when the number of students is equal to 350, the coefficients are between .80 and .97 depending on the form and grade level. As expected, there tended to be a higher relationship between the QCAI scores and both the problem solving and conceptual subtest scores from a mathematics achievement multiple-choice test than between the QCAI scores and the mathematics computation subtest scores.     

Higher education — Public policy-making and implementation

The turbulence which occurred in higher education institutions in the 1960s and 1970s led to considerable interest in examining the processes involved in higher education reform. The most comprehensive attempt at planned change in higher education was made in Sweden. This article analyses the decision-making and the policy-implementation processes in Swedish higher education as a way of illuminating the more general problem of understanding the nature of the processes involved in higher education reform. The article concludes that the data do not fit the standard models of public choice nor do they confirm prevailing notions about policy failure.