In discussion of policy and practice on partnership between higher education providers and other stakeholders in initial teacher education (ITE), one significant approach has been to stress the desirability of developing models which are truly collaborative. This paper first discusses the "collaborative" model within a range of…

This article aims at discussing a new statistical trend in research in applied linguistics. This rather new statistical procedure is causal modeling--path analysis. The article demonstrates that causal modeling--path analysis is the best statistical option to use when the effects of a multitude of L2 learners' variables on language achievement are…

This paper addresses the accumulating knowledge of prospective teachers of secondary school mathematics and their acquired proficiency during the course "Psychological aspects of mathematics education," in which we discussed theoretical models including the intuitive rules theory. Participants' performances are examined by means of an extensive…

This article considers and illustrates a strategy to study effects of school context on differential item functioning (DIF) in large-scale assessment. The approach employs a hierarchical generalized linear modeling framework to (a) detect DIF, and (b) identify school-level correlates of the between-group differences in item performance. To…

By making visible certain entities, phenomena, changes and continuities as being relevant to vocational education, researchers are joint definers of work and education at their sub-national, national and supranational levels. Which stories and mappings are going to have currency in transnational discourses on VET? Studies about transformation of…

This article argues that an important source of the difficulties posed by particular concepts and theories is the narrow range of "types of causal models" with which most learners are familiar. Most learners are familiar with relatively simple styles of causal models, but many concepts and theories in science depend on styles…

Negative affectivity has been defined as a predisposition to experience intense states of negative emotions. As a trait concept it is a dimension that reflects stable and pervasive differences in negative mood and self-concept. There has been systematic evidence linking negative affectivity to anxiety, depression, psychosomatic complaints, pain…

It has been observed that students react in similar ways to mathematics and science tasks that differ with regard either to their content area and/or to the type of reasoning required, but share some common, external features. Based on these observations, the Intuitive Rules Theory was proposed. In this present study the framework of this theory…

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…

This study explored, with both experimental and correlational designs, the roles of (a) authentic, communicatively functional reading and writing and (b) the explicit explanation of genre function and features on growth in genre-specific reading and writing abilities of children in grades two and three. The genres used for this exploration were…

Rather than studying the structural paths through which variables affect student persistence in education, this paper offers a reduced form model that focuses on precollege, demographic, and certain current achievement and financial aid variables. This approach does not specify structural paths, but it does have the advantage of requiring only…

Abuses and misuses of statistics are frequent. This digest attempts to warn against these in three broad classes of pitfalls: sources of bias, errors of methodology, and misinterpretation of results. Sources of bias are conditions or circumstances that affect the external validity of statistical results. In order for a researcher to make…

This digest illustrates the variety of basic and theoretical issues in evaluation with which aspiring evaluators should be conversant in order to claim that they know the knowledge base of their profession. Coverage of the issues includes: the four steps in the logic of evaluation; whether qualitative evaluations are valid; whether it matters if…

The causes of bigotry, prejudice, and hatred and what can be done about them are discussed by the authors represented in this collection. Most of the book provides general discussions of these issues, but Part 2, "Universities and the 'Politically Correct' Response to Hatred and Prejudice," contains some specific examinations of these…

This study investigated gender differences in causal attributions and emotions to success and failure. A literature review on gender differences in causal attributions revealed inconsistencies. For the present study, college students (N=247) filled out questionnaires and were also asked to imagine varying degrees of success in college courses. The…