This study reviews and explores varying effects of college quality caused by different measures of college quality, including Barron's ratings, mean SAT scores of entering freshman class, tuition and fees, and Carnegie Classification. Data for this research come from NCES's Baccalaureate & Beyond study. Results indicate that the estimated…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain and develop a classification of cognitive structures (or typologies of thought), previously designated as spoke, chain and network thinking by Kinchin "et al." Design/methodology/approach: The paper shows how concept mapping can be used to reveal these conceptual typologies and endeavours to place…

In a world increasingly characterised by change, diversity and complexity, with educational institutions, like others, aspiring to become "learning organisations" and where the "knowledge economy" is apparently crucial, schools as workplaces for learning appear to remain peculiarly static. The majority exhibit physical,…

According to parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of visual word recognition, the speed of semantic coding is modulated by the nature of the orthographic-to-semantic mappings. Consistent with this idea, an ambiguity disadvantage and a relatedness-of-meaning (ROM) advantage have been reported in some word recognition tasks in which semantic…

Several methods exist for typologizing dyadic relationships. The present study reviews the utility of methods for typologizing relationships, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of 3 different approaches, and applying them to the study of adolescent sibling relationships. The 3 methods examined are a priority methods, cluster analysis, and…

This article explores the use of simulations and games in tertiary education. It examines the extent to which academics use different simulation-based teaching approaches and how they perceive the barriers to adopting such techniques. Following a review of the extant literature, a typology of simulations is constructed. A staff survey within a UK…

Since 1999, Italian Universities have been monitoring teaching using students opinions to improve the quality of the education process. The acceleration of the evaluation has been promoted by ministerial laws, that have obliged Universities to write reports containing the main results. In this paper, the aim is to find a method to classify the…

In contrast to exemplar and decision-bound categorization models, the memory and contrast models described here do not assume that long-term representations of stimulus magnitudes are available. Instead, stimuli are assumed to be categorized using only their differences from a few recent stimuli. To test this alternative, the authors examined…

Although cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) can be useful in the analysis and interpretation of existing tests, little has been developed to specify how one might construct a good test using aspects of the CDMs. This article discusses the derivation of a general CDM index based on Kullback-Leibler information that will serve as a measure of how…

S. W. Allen and L. R. Brooks (1991) have shown that exemplar memory can affect categorization even when participants are provided with a classification rule. G. Regehr and L. R. Brooks (1993) argued that stimuli must be individuated for such effects to occur. In this study, the authors further analyze the conditions that yield exemplar effects in…

In 3 experiments the authors examined changes in successive exemplar generation percentages within categories defined semantically (e.g., fruit-P, fruit-A, fruit-M) and by 1st letter (e.g., insect-C, sport-C, car-C), with a mixed control condition (e.g., fruit-P, insect-C, disease-M). Retrieval success declined across 12 successive items in both…

The authors present 2 experiments that establish the presence of knowledge partitioning in perceptual categorization. Many participants learned to rely on a context cue, which did not predict category membership but identified partial boundaries, to gate independent partial categorization strategies. When participants partitioned their knowledge,…

A study demonstrated utility of cluster analysis to classify a racially diverse group of children from kindergarten to Grade 3. Four victim subtypes were identified: nonaggressive nonasocial; aggressive; asocial; and both aggressive and asocial. Early aggression levels predicted increases in victimization and chronicity. The role of asocial…

Background: In adults there is evidence that the affective-cognitive processes of rumination and overgeneral autobiographical memory retrieval may play a part in maintaining depression. This study investigated the effects of induced rumination as compared to distraction on mood and categoric overgeneral memory in adolescents with first episode…

This paper addresses two closely interrelated issues in Technology Education: knowledge and values. The starting point for the discussion is analysis of the nature of knowledge in technology education. Approaches for theorising knowledge will be analysed in this paper as well as problems associated with them. Three major types of problems are…