Recently, many insights have been gained into how to create powerful learning environments. The goal of learning how to teach in this way has important consequences for teacher training. Firstly, scholars indicate the necessity to work out a theoretical framework for the student-teachers which is sufficiently complete, but still manageable, and…

Correlational analysis, classical test theory, confirmatory factor analysis, and multilevel Rasch modeling were used to refine a measure of adolescents' exposure to violence (ETV). Interpersonal violence could be distinguished from other potentially traumatic events; it was also possible to distinguish three routes of exposure (victimization,…

This paper reports on an investigation into learning through discussions by undergraduate social work students. Second-year students studying psychology for social work experienced discussions began with face-to-face tutorials, and then continued for some time after online. This study used closed-ended questionnaires to investigate what students…

This study explores the construct validity of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), which was created as a standardized tool for recording the behaviors of children aged 4 through 16 as reported by their parents or caretakers. Since its inception in 1983, the CBCL has been applied and tested on numerous clinical samples, yielding an impressive body…

Students experience learning in a diversity of cultural contexts. A study examined the way in which the causes and appropriate remediation of learning problems are conceptualized across cultures. Also, it explored Australian teachers' beliefs about a number of issues related to policy and practice in the education of students with learning…

The Computing Potential in Atlanta Public School Education (CPAPSE) was developed to determine teacher attitudes about computing potential as an instructional tool and to compare current practice with potential computing applications to determine the degree to which computer resources are being used in grades 2, 3, and 4. During the last week of…

The major innovation of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III" (DSM-III) was the explicit specification of criteria for determining whether an individual's problems qualify for a particular diagnosis. However, neither the choice of child diagnostic categories in DSM-III nor the choice of criteria…

The development of a needs instrument designed to assess the continuing education needs of school administrators is described. The instrument was constructed to assess the administrators' continuing needs in: (1) principalship; (2) the school as a system; (3) problem solving; (4) staff development; (5) collaborative long-range planning; (6)…

The purpose of this study was to determine if students' gender was related to their own and their perceived parental motivational orientations in school achievement. Motivational orientations in school achievement were measured by a number of items focusing on the meaning of success in school, preference for school feedback, school task…

Students' evaluations of teacher effectiveness are explored as a multidimensional construct, emphasizing the Students' Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) instrument developed by H. W. Marsh (1987). An overview is presented of studies in which Marsh evaluated longitudinal data from an archive of responses to nearly 1 million SEEQ instruments…

The original "Bayley Scales of Infant Development" (BSID) (Bayley 1969) have been among the most popular measures of performance and aptitude of infants. In the present study the reliability and construct validity of mental and motor scores on the revised Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II (BSID-II) were investigated. A national…

Two studies in Scotland used similar questionnaires to examine relationships between approaches to studying and students' preferences for different types of learning environments. The first study also examined the relationship with students' evaluations of their courses, while the second included reasons for choosing that course (educational…

A popular instrument purported to measure psychological dimensions of school climate--the Charles F. Kettering Ltd. School Climate Profile (CFK)--was analyzed psychometrically. Factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity of the CFK scale, Part A, General Climate Factors, which contains 8 subscales each with 5 items (a total of 40…

The importance of the presentation order of items on Likert-type scales was studied. It was proposed that subjects tend to choose the first alternative acceptable to them from among the response categories, so that a primacy effect can be predicted. The effects of reversing the order of the response scale on the latent factor structure underlying…

An attempt to develop a locus of control scale that would differentiate one's sense of control over events that are highly controllable from one's sense of control over events that are typically uncontrollable by the individual is described. It was hypothesized that the more remote events are from one's personal control (e.g., events in the lives…