There is increasing agreement among those who study classrooms that learning is likely to be most effective when students are actively involved in the dialogic coconstruction of meaning about topics that are of significance to them. This article reports the results of an extended collaborative action research project in which teachers attempted to…

In this descriptive investigation, we seek to confirm and extend a technique for automatically scoring concept maps. Sixty unscored concept maps from a published dissertation were scored using a computer-based technique adapted from Schvaneveldt (1990) and colleague's Pathfinder network approach. The scores were based on link lines drawn between…

This study tested hypotheses of the Integrative Contextual Model of Career Development (R. T. Lapan, 2004a) by investigating the multivariate effects of 6 interrelated career development skills (career exploration, person-environment fit, goal setting, social/prosocial/work readiness, self-regulated learning, and the utilization of social…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether data distribution changes as a result of motor skill practice or learning. The data on three dependent measures (movement time; MT), percentage of movement time in primary submovement (PSB), and movement jerk (JEK) were collected at baseline and practice Blocks 1 to 5. Sixty 6-year-olds,…

Although clinical judgment is often used in assessment and treatment planning, rarely has research examined its reliability, validity, or impact in practice settings. This study tailored the frequency of home visits in a prevention program for aggressive-disruptive children (n = 410; 56% minority) on the basis of 2 kinds of clinical judgment:…

Purpose: The present study seeks to compare scores on factors from the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) with scores on an abbreviated version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) and examination grade among undergraduate psychology students. The purpose is to investigate the relationship between course experience…

One of the most important effect sizes used in meta-analysis is the standardized mean difference (SMD). In this article, the conditions under which SMD effect sizes based on different measures of the same construct are directly comparable are investigated. The results show that SMD effect sizes from different measures of the same construct are…

The purpose of this study was to compare the parenting styles of custodial, coresident, and nonresident grandmothers and their perceptions of satisfaction, success, and teaching with their grandparent caregiving role. The 124 subjects were custodial grandmothers (n = 79), coresident grandmothers (n = 21), and nonresident grandmothers (n = 23).…

Researchers have been challenged to go beyond socioeconomic status in the search for school-level characteristics that make a difference in student achievement. The purpose of the present study was to identify a new construct, academic optimism, and then use it to explain student achievement while controlling for socioeconomic status, previous…

The actor-observer hypothesis (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1971) states that people tend to explain their own behavior with situation causes and other people's behavior with person causes. Widely known in psychology, this asymmetry has been described as robust, firmly established, and pervasive. However, a meta-analysis on 173 published studies…

In the statistical and transcriptional analyses reported in this exploratory study, original rhythms of 6-11-year-old children (N=36) were examined. The hypotheses were based on a new model of musical development, and tested empirically using non-pitch rhythmic improvisation in a MIDI-environment. Several representational types were found in…

Although hopelessness and depression are known risk factors for suicide, most individuals who are hopeless or depressed never make a suicide attempt. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that college students' (n = 230) attitudes toward suicide (the degree to which they see it as an acceptable option under some circumstances) would moderate the…

The experimental results of a collaborative problem solving and program development model that takes into consideration the cognitive and social activities that occur during software development is presented in this paper. This collaborative model is based on the Dual Common Model that focuses on individual cognitive aspects of problem solving and…

In 1998, California state legislation called for significant reform in the preparation of teachers. As a result, institutions of higher learning must now conduct a formal performance-based assessment. All teacher candidates must participate in the assessment at the end of the program for receipt of the preliminary teaching credential. The…

As item response theory (IRT) becomes popular in educational and psychological testing, there is a need of reporting IRT-based effect size measures. In this study, we show how the standardized mean difference can be generalized into such a measure. A disattenuation procedure based on the IRT test reliability is proposed to correct the attenuation…