Most criticisms of American schools are too broad and are off-base. The first criterion in evaluating education should be its contribution to character formation. Students cannot cope with authority figures, rules, and routines; a school structure that teaches them to regulate themselves is needed. (PP)

The relative influence of cooperative-competitive social orientation on school achievement for Anglo-American and Mexican-American children was assessed. The importance of competitiveness for Anglo-American children and the moderate relationship of other personality variables to achievement in both groups is shown. (Author/CM)

Explored the relationship of perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) to environment and individual subjects' characteristics. Experimental manipulation of objective environmental uncertainty showed task-related PEU strongly related to this objective uncertainty manipulation, and secondarily to individual characteristics. Results suggest…

Discusses Meehan, Woll, and Abbott's study showing that scores on Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) are affected by instructions to simulate politically liberal or conservative attitudes. This paper asserts that test-taking is a form of self-presentation, identical to everyday social interactions. Woll responds, reasserting his…

Classroom teachers rated school behavior of 44 children, aged 12-17, of schizophrenic parents and 70 children of normal parents. Results showed children of schizophrenic parents had greater interpersonal disharmony, less scholastic motivation, more emotional instability, and lower intelligence than control children, but differences in introversion…

Suggests that teachers can be differentiated by their cognitive or affective orientations, reflected in the objectives they select and in the stimuli and questions they present in the classroom. Proposes use of aptitude-treatment interactions in order to clarify the best methods to use for personalized teacher training. (JD)

The Rasch simple logistic model is used to examine the relative item parameter values of a personality inventory with respect to populations cross-classified by sex and country. While items conform to the model within each of the populations, half the items show significant discrepancies among the populations. (Author/RL)

Using 276 students from Boston University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the relationships between types of students and their work values and motivational profiles were investigated by means of factor and discriminant analyses. The vocational model is contrasted with the collegiate, nonconformist, and academic groups. (Author/MLW)

Discusses the meaning of intelligence, the social functions that tests serve, the appropriate use of personality tests, controversies regarding IQ measurement, minimum competency testing, test disclosure, test bias, and "truth in testing." Stresses that testing is as much a social and political issue as it is an issue of scientific measurement.…

Describes the development of the College Freshman Adjustment Scale (CFAS) which enables deans and counselors to pinpoint quickly those areas of college life which may be generative of the problems college freshmen may experience. The CFAS was developed for two general areas: personal-social adjustment and academic adjustment. (Author/RC)

Discussed whether similarity affects the relationship between comparison and other-evaluation. Subjects read about an emergency, estimated their reaction, and evaluated a target who failed to help. Results showed increasing discrepancy between self and other's reactions led to more negative evaluations if self and target were the same sex.…

Two experiments were designed to investigate among kindergarten through third-grade children the development of character constancy -- the belief that other's or self's personality characteristics are stable across time and do not change despite changes in appearance. It is proposed that character constancy of self and other is a product of both…

Described students' evaluations of identical teaching methods of female and male award-winning professors in two traditionally masculine, two traditionally feminine, and two relatively non-sex-linked areas. Students attributed the success of male professors to instrumental qualities and that of females to affective qualities. (Author/JAC)

Tested the proposition that American older people are politically more conservative than middle-aged people, using the National Election Studies from 1952-80. Alternative conceptions of conservatism were employed. Results vary, but in general the differences between the two groups appear small. (Author/JAC)

Reports on a study that assessed students' ability to perceive their teachers' level of warmth and empathy and whether this perception affected student achievement in language arts classrooms. (FL)