The graphic organizer called here heuristic diagram as an improvement of Gowin's Vee heuristic is proposed as a tool to teach history of science. Heuristic diagrams have the purpose of helping students (or teachers, or researchers) to understand their own research considering that asks and problem-solving are central to scientific activity. The…

Sociologists have developed a wide range of pedagogical strategies to facilitate student learning about racial/ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Despite the growing subdiscipline of the sociology of the body and evidence pointing to the prevalence of inequalities based on physical attractiveness, the pedagogical literature has yet to develop…

If stimulus equivalence is a model of meaning, abstract stimuli should acquire the meaning of meaningful stimuli equivalent to them. In Experiment 1, college students matched faces expressing emotions to arbitrary pictures, forming three classes of equivalent stimuli, each comprising an emotional expression and three arbitrary pictures. Semantic…

This investigation conducted at a private faith-based university explored how graduate course work can impact teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions regarding English language development. Specifically, the investigators examined the nature and extent of change in attitude by teachers and teacher candidates who participated in a…

The present study examined the effects of age, gender, and causality on the perceptions of persons with mental retardation. Participants rated individuals with mental retardation using a semantic differential scale with three factors: activity, evaluation, and potency. Target individuals in each scenario varied on the variables of age (8, 20, 45),…

Using semantic differential scales with nine trait pairs, 445 adults rated five audio-taped speech samples, one depicting an individual without a disorder and four portraying communication disorders. Statistical analyses indicated that the no disorder sample was rated higher with respect to the trait of employability than were the articulation,…

This study aims to determine the attitudes toward Standard Spoken Tamil (SST) and Literary Tamil (LT) of 46 Tamil teachers in Singapore. The teachers' attitudes were used as an indicator of the acceptance or nonacceptance of SST as a viable option in the teaching of Tamil in the classroom, in which the focus has been largely on LT. The…

This paper discusses on the mapping of the English preposition "at" in the context of forward and backward translation in temporal domain based on the temporal sense of "at" of the English preposition and its extension to different lexical positions in the Arabic language. This can be explained in the way the conceptual mapping…

The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to describe a unique teacher licensure program for grades 7-12 that integrates mathematics, science, and technology education and (b) to explore the attitudes and perceptions related to the integration of mathematics, science, and technology education of three cohorts of preservice teachers enrolled in…

Two studies were conducted to reexamine the psychometric properties of two major scales measuring attitudes toward older adults. The Kogan Attitudes Toward Old People Scale (Kogan OP Scale; Kogan, 1961b) was administered to a sample of 512 college students in Study One. The refined version (Polizzi & Millikin, 2002) of the Aging Semantic…

General practitioners (GPs) need advanced skills in geriatric assessment to be competent to treat the increasing number of elderly patients. Continuing medical education in geriatrics for GPs is heterogeneous, and not assessed for effectiveness. In this study we compared the educational effects of three geriatric post-graduate training methods on…

The learning style individual difference factor has long been a basis for understanding student preferences for various learning activities. Marketing educators have been advised to heavily invest in tailoring course design based on the learning style groups in their classes. A further exploration of the effects of learning style differences on…

The use of a semantic differential measure to investigate the institutional image of Tufts University (Massachusetts), both internal and external, is reported. The study focused on (1) differences between the current and desired image, and (2) differences among alumni, current student, and other constituencies' views of the institution.…

Posits policymakers' and researchers' mutual inability to communicate in compatible language and imagery. Explores several rationales for the divergence between two separate cultures (the academic and the political), referring to an "ecology of games." Illuminates gaps with case material from policymaking in Florida, and develops…

Male and female participants (N = 274) made judgments about the social concepts of "feminist," "man," and "woman" on 63 semantic differential items. Factor analysis identified three basic dimensions termed evaluative, potency, and activity as well as two secondary factors called expressiveness and sexuality. Results for the evaluative dimension…