Heterosexual Bias Among Counselor Trainees

Master's level counselor trainees rated an audiotaped and role-played intake interview of a female client whose sexual orientation was varied. In Condition 1, the client referred to her partner as “Doug,” a man; in Condition 2, the client referred to her partner as “Diane,” a woman; in Condition 3, the client referred to her partner as “Chris,” whose sex was unidentifiable. Subtle forms of heterosexual bias were found through participants' ratings of the unidentifiable client. When responding to the ambiguous condition involving the unidentifiable client, 83% of the participants assumed the client was heterosexual. When they were debriefed, participants expressed concern over the lack of training on issues related to counseling lesbian and gay clients. Use of the ambiguous case example, as in this study, is recommended for training to assess and confront increasingly subtle forms of heterosexual bias.     

WHICH EXAMINEES ARE MOST FAVOURED BY THE USE OF MULTIPLE CHOICE TESTS?

Scores were obtained from 198 ninth grade students on achievement motivation, test anxiety, testwiseness, and risktaking. Tests in mathematics and vocabulary were constructed in free response and multiple choice form, and administered to the subjects in that order, with an interval of 5 weeks between administrations. Partial correlations were computed between scores on the multiple choice tests and achievement motivation, test anxiety, testwiseness, and risktaking, with free response scores partialled out. The partial correlations were corrected for the unreliability in the free response scores, and tested for significance. All partials involving achievement motivation and test anxiety were nonsignificant, as were all partials based on mathematics scores. The partial correlations of vocabulary scores with testwiseness and risktaking were significant without exception. It was concluded that the use of multiple choice tests can favour certain examinees those who are highly testwise and willing to take risks in the test situation. It was noted that the extent to which these examinees were favoured was dependent on the nature of the test, and that a verbal test seemed more susceptible than a numerical test.     

International Business Theatre (IBT): An alternative evaluation method for enhancing student learning in international marketing

This paper describes and documents a new method (International Business Theatre, IBT) for evaluating university students studying the subject International Marketing and reports on qualitative research used to explore the effectiveness of IBT as an evaluation method. IBT involves forming students into 'theatre troupes', randomly assigning each 'troupe' a country of study, then getting students to do country research with a view to writing and performing a play that integrates subject theory and highlights key aspects of doing business with that country. Plays, which are assessed for content and form, are scheduled for tutorial classes towards the end of the semester. Interpretive research was conducted using a sentence completion technique with 10 randomly selected undergraduate students in the subject International Marketing offered at the Blacktown Campus of the University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1998. Conclusions drawn from the preliminary study are that IBT makes student learning more enjoyable and interesting, exposes students to a more beneficial and alternative form of evaluation, stimulates student learning, encourages student creativity and develops student confidence in public speaking.