‘Consider the Opposite’ – Effects of elaborative feedback and correct answer feedback on reducing confirmation bias – A pre-registered study

Unbiased reasoning is considered an essential critical thinking skill that students need to possess to face the future challenges in their work and life. Confirmation bias, which is the tendency to selectively attend to information that is consistent with held beliefs, presents a significant thread to unbiased reasoning. An effective strategy to reduce confirmation bias is the ‘consider-the-opposite’-strategy (COS). The central question of this pre-registered study was whether providing elaborative, worked example feedback after COS practice would lead to a better performance on previously practised and transfer tasks than correct-answer feedback. Participants were 132 university students who took a confirmation bias pre-test, watched an instructional video on COS afterwards and next received either worked example feedback or correct answer feedback on practice tasks, practised only, watched the instruction only or received no treatment. Finally, all participants took a learning test assessing their skill to avoid confirmation bias, and a transfer test assessing whether they could apply this acquired skill to problems containing other biases. Results revealed no differences on the learning test between both feedback conditions, but students who received feedback scored significantly higher on the confirmation bias problems than students who did not receive feedback. We carried out our pre-registered analysis plan, but due to the low reliability of particularly the pre-test, we carried out an additional exploratory analysis on subsets of post-test items and a subset of transfer test items. Results on learning revealed the same pattern as the planned analyses. However, we found no differences between any of the conditions on transfer.     

Standardized Testing + High-Stakes Decisions = Educational Inequity

Changes in assessment policy have increased standardized testing at provincial, national, and international levels, introduced testing at more grade levels, increased the reporting of test results, and attached more significance to those results. Advocates claim that testing will result in greater accountability in education. The research demonstrates that standardized testing has a negative impact on students, perpetuating and intensifying educational inequity through test bias and the misuse of test scores. Test results are increasingly being used to analyse policy, program, school, and teacher success, and they are being inappropriately used as "educational gatekeepers" to make important decisions about students, teachers, schools, and school systems. This paper focuses on how standardized testing is becoming the mechanism that facilitates many questionable education practices that contribute to educational inequity.     

强迫症患者注意偏向研究方法述评

在简要回顾有关强迫症个体注意偏向的研究的基础上,较为系统地比较、阐述了强迫症注意偏向研究中的主要研究范式（强迫症Stroop任务、点探测任务、空间线索任务）.最后,通过对前人研究的分析总结,对强迫症注意偏向未来研究的取向和趋势进行了展望.     

Speciesist language and nonhuman animal bias in English Masked Language Models

Warning: This paper contains examples of offensive language, including insulting or objectifying expressions.Various existing studies have analyzed what social biases are inherited by NLP models. These biases may directly or indirectly harm people, therefore previous studies have focused only on human attributes. However, until recently no research on social biases in NLP regarding nonhumans existed. In this paper,¹ we analyze biases to nonhuman animals, i.e. speciesist bias, inherent in English Masked Language Models such as BERT. We analyzed speciesist bias against 46 animal names using template-based and corpus-extracted sentences containing speciesist (or non-speciesist) language. We found that pre-trained masked language models tend to associate harmful words with nonhuman animals and have a bias toward using speciesist language for some nonhuman animal names. Our code for reproducing the experiments will be made available on GitHub.²     

Pre-service teachers’ desire to control bias: Implications for the endorsement of culturally affirming classroom practices

The study integrates social-psychological and educational research to examine the relations between preservice teachers’ race-related perceptions of Black students and the instructional approaches they endorse. Based on survey and race Implicit Association Test data from preservice teachers (N = 258; White = 82%) in the United States, we predicted that the association between motivation to be unprejudiced and motivation to appear unprejudiced would predict endorsement of culturally and motivationally supportive instructional practices via implicit and explicit biases about Black students. Path analyses revealed significant mediated associations among motivation to be unprejudiced and endorsed instructional approaches and practices via explicit bias, contingent on the motivation to appear unprejudiced. Furthermore, it is troubling to note that White preservice teachers, in contrast to their ethnic minority counterparts, displayed significant implicit preference for White over Black students. Implications of these findings for preparing a culturally responsive and motivational supportive teaching task-force are discussed.     

Modeling Educational Effectiveness in Classrooms: The Use of Multi-Level Structural Equations to Model Students’ Progress

Long-standing and enduring problems in quantitative studies of educational effectiveness relate to fitting models that adequately reflect the complex inter-relationships among multivariate, multilevel factors affecting students’ educational progress, particularly among those that operate within classrooms. This article illustrates one approach to solving such difficulties by combining the analytic approaches of multilevel analysis and structural equation modeling in a two-stage process. The data used are drawn from a longitudinal study of teacher and school effectiveness for three Grade-level cohorts of 4,558 students clustered within 334 class/teacher groups in 52 elementary schools. The article provides estimates of inter-relationships among achievement and social background factors including ‘critical events’ on students’ progress in mathematics, together with their affective schooling experiences and inattentive behaviors in the classroom. Findings are presented indicating the extent to which progress can be accounted for by the grouping effects of students within classes and schools, highlighting the importance of accounting for the interdependent effects among variables. Both the substantive and methodological implications of the findings are discussed. Résumé De longue date et de manière persistante, les problèmes posés dans les études quantitatives sur l’efficacité de l’enseignement tiennent à la capacité d’élaborer des modèles qui reflètent de manière adéquate la complexité des interrelations parmi les multiples variables, avec leurs multiples niveaux, qui interviennent dans la progression des étudiants, particulièrement en ce qui concerne celles qui opèrent à l’intérieur même des classes dans les écoles. Cet article présente une approche cherchant à résoudre de telles difficultés en combinant les techniques de l’analyse multivariée avec un modèle d'équation structurale impliquant un processus à deux niveaux. Les données utilisées sont tirées d’une étude longitudinale sur l’efficience des écoles et des enseignants portant sur des cohortes de trois degrés scolaires touchant 4558 élèves provenant de 334 groupes classe/enseignant dans 52 écoles élémentaires. L’article fournit des estimations concernant les interrelations entre la réussite scolaire et des facteurs relevant de l’environnement social incluant des “événements critiques” dans la progression des élèves en mathématiques, mis en rapport avec leur expérience scolaire affective et des comportements inattentifs en classe. Les conclusions présentées indiquent la mesure dans laquelle le progrès peut être expliqué par des effets de groupes d’élèves à l’intérieur des classes et des écoles. Elles éclairent l’importance de la prise en compte de l’interdépendance des éléments parmi les variables. La justification et les implications méthodologiques des conclusions sont discutées. (Traduction: Raymond Hutin, Dr ès sciences de l’éducation, Dardagny / Suisse)     

本地偏好对退出绩效的影响研究——基于中国本土风险投资机构的经验检验

风险投资机构本地偏好是风险投资机构投资组合空间分配的重要特征。本文以中国本土风险投资机构为研究对象,基于CVSource2000-2011年的风险投资大样本数据,分别运用Probit模型和Cox比例风险模型,研究风险投资机构本地偏好对成功退出和退出速度的影响。研究发现:本地偏好对成功退出的可能性、退出速度具有显著的负向影响,表明本地偏好程度低的风险投资机构其退出绩效更高。     

创业认知偏差与高校毕业生连续创业的关系研究

连续创业已成为高校毕业生的常态,对创业认知偏差与高校毕业生连续创业的关系进行探讨,有助于提升高校毕业生创业指导成效.基于创业认知理论,课题组以浙江金华、杭州地区350名连续创业者的调研数据为依托,探索创业者认知偏差对高校毕业生连续创业行为的作用关系.     

英语中女性称谓的性别歧视及其发展趋势

性别歧视是一种由来已久的社会现象。这种现象又体现在对女性的称谓上。通过对女性称谓的研究发现：英语中存在大量的女性称谓歧视语，但其发展趋势是语言的中性化。     

Assessing Response Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Web and Paper Surveys

Using data collected as part of the second pilot administration of Your First College Year (YFCY), a national survey of first-year college students, this study was designed to examine both response rates and nonresponse bias across four survey administration groups: paper-only, paper with web option, web-only with response incentive, and web-only without response incentive. Findings indicate that response rates vary by mode of administration. Moreover, predictors of response differed by administration group. Results are discussed in light of the recent surge of interest in online survey research.