What are the cognitive mechanisms underlying subjective valuations formed on the basis of sequential experiences of an option's possible outcomes? Ashby and Rakow (2014) have proposed a sliding window model (SWIM), according to which people's valuations represent the average of a limited sample of recent experiences (the size of which is estimated…

In this paper we describe some of the complexities involved in the construction of a sample of "ordinary" schools. We outline the policy context in England that produces pressures to resist "ordinariness". The paper then explores two theoretical tools, fabrication and rhetoric, that are deployed in an analysis of some key…

Purpose: Despite the critical role of support personnel in education, the literature about their supervision has been less than informative. In an effort to provide additional guidance to school leaders seeking to improve the supervision of such personnel, the purpose of this paper is to examine and compare three distinct groups of support…

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of…

When 58 creative college students were administered the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire and compared to 58 controls, the creative students showed greater agreement of endorsement on the "Mental Illness,""Right to Die,""Normality," and "Aggression" scales, and greater disagreement on the "Cry for Help,""Religion," and "Moral Evil" scales. (Author/JDD)

The Defining Issues Test (DIT) of moral judgment, a stage preference approach, is compared with the Moral Judgment Test (MJT) widely used in Europe. The MJT is a stage consistency test. Construct validity is defined in terms of seven types of studies, which support use of the stage preference approach. (SLD)

Borrowing from epidemiological and economic analysis, we argue that the central constructs by which children are judged educationally rest in contrastive judgements and that such judgements are based on "everyday" constructs--not objective descriptors. But because these everyday constructs become seemingly objectified by the procedures and…

Modified dilemmas from the Kohlberg Moral Judgment Instrument were administered to 15 hearing-impaired students, aged 12-15. Analyses indicated that subjects reasoned at Stages 1-2, whereas Kohlberg's norms indicate that hearing peers reason at Stages 2-4. A positive correlation was found between subjects' average scores for moral reasoning and…

An analysis of the opinions of 126 Saudi Arabian and of 166 U.S. students about 6 instances of law violations indicated that the gender of the student making the moral judgment was not a dominant factor in the student's selecting consequences to be experienced by people who committed the acts represented in the 6 cases. However, there were…