This laboratory exercise introduces students to a fundamental tool in evolutionary biology--phylogenetic inference. Students are required to create a data set via observation and through mining preexisting data sets. These student data sets are then used to develop and compare competing hypotheses of vertebrate phylogeny. The exercise uses readily…

More than any other of its aspects, assessment plays a central role in determining the quality of education. Quality of primary/basic education (QoE) can be viewed as the extent to which the process of education at the primary education level maximizes desirable outcomes in terms of cognitive, affective and psychomotor behaviour of the learners.…

This study attempts to reconcile viewpoints on the role of errors in the design of computer-based training (CBT) systems. From one perspective, errors are detrimental to learning; from another, they can be beneficial. The results of an experiment are presented and discussed. When a CBT system is designed to allow learners to correct their own…

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying how three comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs organized schools for instructional change and how the distinctive strategies they pursued affected implementation outcomes. The conceptual model views the Accelerated Schools Project as using a system of cultural control to produce…

This study examined ethnic and sex differences in children's depressive symptoms, along with hypothesized mediators of those differences (academic achievement, peer acceptance), in a follow-up of African American (n = 179) and Euro-American (n= 462) children in Grades 3 to 5. African American boys reported more depressive symptoms than African…

This study compared alternative hypotheses (from general deviance, life course, and developmental psychopathology perspectives) regarding the effects of early adolescent delinquency on psychosocial functioning in family, school, and peer contexts, and on alcohol use. Analyses also examined parent-child negative affective quality, prosocial school…

This study investigates the application of voice recognition technology to online lectures focusing on the efficacy of the text component of a multimedia presentation. Specifically, participants were provided with online access to multimedia instructional packages comprising an image of the lecturer with accompanying computer slides, plus…

This study used principles underlying item generation theory to posit competing perspectives about which features of situational judgment tests might enhance or impede consistent measurement across repeat test administrations. This led to 3 alternate-form development approaches (random assignment, incident isomorphism, and item isomorphism). The…

Despite readily available alumni survey data warehoused at many alumni associations and foundations across colleges and universities, researchers have underutilized the abundant available data to identify key predictors of alumni donation, including factors that trigger alumni donation behavior. Utilizing the data from a two-year alumni survey…

Purpose--The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of life cycle stage, specifically parenting stage, on work-family conflict among working parents to determine whether discernible differences are evident among those individuals at the early stage of their parenting cycle compared with those with older children.…

Living with HIV involves management of multiple stressful disease-related and other life events. Distress tolerance may provide a functional, individual-based context for qualifying the established relationships between major life events and psychosocial variables important in the management of HIV. The present study provided a preliminary test of…

In an effort to spend time resources more wisely, many schools have turned to block scheduling, in which classes are taught in longer periods. The school year is adjusted by dividing it into 30-; 45-; 60-; or 90-day periods. This paper presents findings of a study that investigated the effects of block scheduling on seventh-grade mathematics…

This booklet provides some systematic guidelines for assisting educational planners to discriminate between high-quality educational research and research that should not be relied on for decision making. The guidelines focus on educational research studies that employ either experimental or survey-research methodologies. A checklist is presented…

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) like microworlds have been touted as one approach for blending learning theory and emerging technology to support the building of student-centered understanding. The learning process involves developing a theory-in-action--an intuitive theory that is generated and changed by learners as they reflect upon…

There is a considerable interest at Educational Testing Service (ETS) to include performance-based, natural language constructed-response items on standardized tests. Such items can be developed, but the projected time and costs required to have these items scored by human graders would be prohibitive. In order for ETS to include these types of…