Self-report, pre/post testing is a frequently employed measure of therapeutic change. To investigate whether expectation of change might be an alternative explanation to the scale shift explanation of response shift bias in a self-report measure, a two-session assertiveness training intervention for college women was evaluated under manipulated…

Ways hospitals can promote the psychological and social well being of young patients are explored in this paper. First, the importance of familiarizing the child with the hospital is emphasized. Second, emotions hospitalized children may feel and the possible causes of those emotions are listed. Third, methods hospital personnel can use to help…

An empirical item characteristic curve shows the probability of a correct response as a function of the student's total test score. These curves can be estimated from large-scale pretest data. They enable test developers to select items that discriminate well in the score region where decisions are made. A similar set of curves can be used to…

This paper reviews some of the findings of research on classroom questions, and considers ways in which sociolinguistic theory may help resolve some questions it leaves unanswered. The paper is divided into three sections, which correspond to three features of questions. The three features are the "context" of questions, the "content" of…

A psychologist, who is the father of a child with a neuromuscular disorder, discusses psychosocial services for special needs children and their families. Parents are identified as the key to the family's mental health. Parents' feelings upon learning of their child's handicap include anger, blaming others and self, and guilt. These feelings are…

A total of 2,000 essays written by 1,000 students was submitted to generalizability analyses for domain-referenced tests. Each student had written one essay on each of two prompts representing two models of discourse. Each essay was read by six readers and judged on a scale of from 1 to 4. No reader read essays from both prompts. Reader agreement…

A study focused on audience selectivity and involvement before and during television exposure. Two types of selectivity were considered: program selection before exposure and changing channels while viewing. The study included four indications of audience involvement: intentionality, or anticipating TV viewing; attention or focused cognitive…

The reflective inquiry model of teacher education uses case methods to develop a particular professional way of thinking characteristic of expert teachers. Teaching cases play an important role in preparing teachers emotionally as well as intellectually for the problems of multicultural classrooms, and in legitimizing the discussion of crucial…

This book contains 16 articles on how teachers respond to students' writing and how they can help students evaluate their own writing and make it more effective. It encourages teachers to study their own assumptions and techniques for responding to student work, assess whether they are helping students take responsibility, and adjust their…

According to Wolfgang Iser's "The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response," the meaning of a literary text is created by each individual reader in response to gaps, or indeterminacies, in the text. With the application of this theory to the two-year college classroom, teachers can show inexperienced readers how to discover the meaning of…

After a review of the literature on cognitive "cause maps" in organizational decision-making, this study describes a midwestern elementary school from the perspective of individual sensemaking, captured through individual cognitive maps of cause-effect relationships. Data were collected with an adaptation of Bougon's (1983) Self-Q…

Freshman and sophomore composition students who are required to write in response to literature frequently find that they are not yet secure enough in their basic writing skills to discuss a literary work. In order to help these students, writing center tutors must be familiar with the assigned writing tasks and what instructors expect from an…

The project studied videotaped unstructured play sessions between 16 Downs Syndrome (DS) infants (aged 6 months and 12 months) and their mothers, to investigate the relationship between maternal attention-directing strategies and the infants' response to toys. A comparison group consisted of 16 high-risk premature infants matched by mental and…

Two adaptive psychophysical procedures (tracking and "yes-no" staircase) for obtaining human visual contrast sensitivity functions (CSF) were evaluated. The procedures were chosen based on their proven validity and the desire to evaluate the practical effects of stimulus transients, since tracking procedures traditionally employ gradual…

Data analyses and interpretations presented in this report were obtained from a national data set collected for "A Study of Schooling." Elementary teachers (N=286) responded to a questionnaire asking them to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with 12 statements of educational beliefs concerning teacher control and student…