NASSP's 1996 report "Breaking Ranks" views principals as pivotal to restructuring high schools. Freeing principals from excessive management entanglements and hiring and training knowledgeable, trustworthy, and credible individuals will help achieve restructuring goals. Credibility characterizes those who are unquestionably honest, value…

Describes four classroom learning experiences designed to analyze construction of media messages. Notes these activities, appropriate for children aged approximately 12 and older, are intended to create a learning environment that encourages active discourse on critical questions about information sources, belief, uncertainty and doubt, authority,…

Explores the use of self-citation and authorial mention in a corpus of 240 research articles and 800 abstracts in eight disciplines. Shows how self-mention is used and the ways these uses reflect both the promotional strategies of individuals and the epistemological practices of their disciplines. (Author/LRW)

Used hypothetical vignettes to examine 384 preadolescents' understanding of gossip in varying circumstances. Found that children correctly labeled talk about nonpresent others as gossip and considered it inappropriate. Skepticism was higher for gossip than for firsthand information and was greatest with cues suggesting that speakers were…

A study investigated the consistence of 222 children's (ages 3-16) reports of sexual and physical abuse. Older children were more consistent, children were more consistent when reporting sexual abuse, and girls were more consistent in sexual abuse reports. Consistency in sexual abuse reports was predicted by measures of memory. (Contains…

Determines how race and gender of columnist and reader interact to influence readers' perceptions of the credibility of the opinion column. Examines whether regional differences would relate to credibility, using 594 students from two universities 2,500 miles apart. Finds no differences in credibility by race or gender of the columnist until…

Expands Carl Hovland's Yale Communication Model to include dimensions which explain gender differences in speaker credibility in persuasive business communication, with support from the gender literature. (MS)

Examines mock jurors processing testimony under impression-set and memory-set conditions to determine under which condition they rate a witness to be more deceptive. Finds that under impression-set objectives subjects formed stronger judgments of the witness's deceptiveness, while the pattern was reversed under memory-set conditions. (MS)

Investigated the educational effects of a Dutch schools television series designed to teach children aged 10 through 12 that television news broadcasts give a selective and thus subjective and incomplete impression of the news. Results indicate that the series led to an increase in children's knowledge of the news selection process, but no…

Discusses scholarly journals in the field of social work, information sources for social work practitioners versus researchers, and grey documentation as an alternative means of knowledge transfer. Highlights include research versus practice; grey documentation and scientific credibility; and dissemination of grey literature. (LRW)

Current discipline and motivation problems in our schools are indicative of students' rejection of an education irrelevant to their lives and worthless in terms of future employment. Educators must abandon their determination to maintain a competitive and hierarchical educational treadmill and encourage the young to begin an exploration of the…

Discusses the possible lack of credibility in educational interactive computer simulations. Topics addressed include "Shopping on Mars," a collaborative adventure game for arithmetic calculation that uses direct manipulation in the microworld; the Alternative Reality Kit, a graphical animated environment for creating interactive…

Since its creation in 1992, the Public Health Service's Office of Research Integrity has not won a single case against a scientist accused of research misconduct. Cases are adjudicated by a panel of lawyers. Scientists and critics agree that the government's failure will have serious consequences for the research community. (MSE)

A Weberian perspective suggests that increased perceptions of environmental risk are related to fears of recreancy (institutional failure to fulfill societal responsibilities) rather than to ignorance or irrationality. Regarding nuclear waste facilities, analyses of survey data find that the recreancy perspective explains three times more variance…

Studied the credibility of six male professors through the attitudes of 28 students, exploring differences in black and white students' ideas about credibility. Students revealed that the credibility of black teachers was more likely to be questioned, depending in part on the subject matter they taught. (SLD)