Adolescent offspring of alcoholics have been found to have higher alcohol reinforcement expectancies than do teenagers from nonalcoholic families. In particular, those with a positive family history of alcoholism expect more cognitive and motor enhancement with alcohol consumption. This study examined the alcohol expectancies of 58 matched pairs…

This study investigated the extent to which school experience affects the perceptions and practices of teachers of gifted/talented children. A group of teachers with experience of school programs for gifted/talented children was compared with a group that had not been involved in any special programs. The experienced group showed greater…

This paper reviews recent literature regarding the impact of teacher expectations on student performance. The first section reviews recent literature with respect to teacher expectations in which teacher characteristics were viewed as the dependent variable in the interaction. The focus of the second section is to review recent literature where…

Drug and alcohol abuse remains one of the most serious problems facing our society today. This study proposed that expected consequences of resisting peer pressure to drink alcohol may be important influences on actual drinking behavior and focused on describing these expectations. Sixth-graders (N=70) were presented with a hypothetical dilemma…

Summaries of talks from this 3-day conference emphasize the potential of all students from any background to succeed in their education. One keynote speaker urges restructuring of educators' beliefs that many children cannot achieve at the level of a high school graduate. Speakers describe successful programs to encourage female school…

A study examined the relationship between teacher's conceptions and practices during writing instruction. A pool of 27 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers completed structured questionnaires on their conceptions about writing instruction. From the original pool, 10 subjects were chosen because they held the most disparate conceptions about…

Enlistment intentions, educational expectations, and sociodemographic factors were examined in the context of their pairwise relationship to the enlistment decision. A model was developed relating enlistments to stated intentions and other variables. This model was then statistically estimated from a sample from the National Longitudinal Survey.…

Explored with a causal modeling approach were relationships among (1) student socioeconomic status (SES), (2) students', teachers', and principals' expectations for and attributed responsibility for students' learning, and (3) students' achievement. Participants were 76 principals, 250 teachers, and 5,289 third-grade students included in a sample…

Environmental assessment, which involves examining the perceptions of people in a given environment or social climate (socially agreed upon norms for acceptable behaviors) is one method of placing behavior in context. The University of Maryland, College Park, conducted a student survey in order to examine the social climate through a study of…

Traditional sex roles are changing in the areas of work, marriage, and family. Two studies were conducted to examine college students' actual expectations toward their own careers, marriages, and parenthood. In the first study, 167 college students completed a questionnaire in which they judged their past and expected future life employment…

A study examined the relationships between the motivational variables of self-efficacy (the belief that one is capable of performing effectively) and outcome expectancies (contingency or causal dependency between actions and results) and performance in reading and writing. Subjects, 153 college students, completed measures of self-efficacy for…

This paper describes how teachers of young children who are also mothers of young children perceived and dealt with problems in their dual role. Three specific questions were addressed: (1) How do teacher/mothers perceive the interaction between the two roles? (2) What positive and negative effects does each of the two roles have on the…

This report summarizes activities of the pilot year (1981-82) of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (LSES), a five-year exploration of those factors that make some of Louisiana's schools more effective than others in educating students. The pilot year of the project was conducted in the Caddo Parish School System and accomplished two tasks:…

Much has been written about the conflicts that women experience when they combine work and family roles into one life style. This study focused on how the issue of the marriage-career conflict played itself out in the lives of women who graduated from college in 1967. Data were obtained from a stratified random sample of female college graduates…

Two variables, expectations and self-efficacy, were investigated to illuminate their relationship with achievement. The school was the unit of analysis chosen, and three levels of subjects were evaluated--students, teachers, and principals. Students, teachers, and principals within high achieving schools were hypothesized to evidence significantly…