Reports on a study investigating whether a field-specific oral proficiency test would be a better predictor of field-specific performance than a general purpose oral proficiency test. A theoretical discussion is presented on field-specific language testing and guidelines for the construction of oral proficiency tests in specific purpose contexts.…

Describes a teaching assistant (TA) training program to improve quality of a college physics course. Presents the goals and structures of the physics course and the TA training program. Describes the formative evaluation procedure and its role in developing the training model. Concludes that students in the physics class valued the recitation and…

Surveyed students (n=166) living in graduate student housing to assess social support in their academic programs and family environment, recent stressful life events, and depression and anxiety as psychological symptoms of stress. Women reported significantly more stress, more symptoms of stress, and significantly less support from their academic…

Asked graduate faculty to provide information about writing requirements of first-year doctoral students, criteria they use to evaluate students' writing, and writing problems of native- and nonnative-English-speaking students. Survey results raise pedagogical issues concerning global versus local writing problems, role of vocabulary instruction,…

Investigated willingness of 86 hypothetical supervisors (86 students enrolled in graduate-level business classes) to refer subordinates with 5 types of problems (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, human immunodeficiency virus-positive status, alcohol abuse, cocaine abuse, job impairment) to Employee Assistance Programs. More severe worker's…

A survey of 155 Canadian economics graduate students in 17 institutions found most came from high-income families and generally had leftist political attitudes. They share attitudes with U.S. economics graduate students more than with Canadian or U.S. professionals, and favor learning of technical skills over learning about institutions, history,…

A survey of 101 social sciences graduate students investigated their writing habits, attitudes toward writing, and productivity. Three distinct groups were identified--planners, revisers, and mixed strategy writers--each with differing productivity and perceptions of writing difficulty. (Author/MSE)

Summarizes results of a study offering both retrospective and prospective views of supervision, based on graduate students' definitions of supervision. Four emergent themes included the domains of supervision, supervisory tasks, supervisory relationships, and supervisor traits. Findings suggest that aspiring supervisors confuse administration with…

Presents evidence that conceptual and numerical multiple-choice questions effectively measure achievement in accounting courses for students with varying but basic English language skills, regardless of a student's native language. Well constructed multiple-choice questions are valid measuring devices for heterogeneous native-language groups.…

Describes a study that utilized a magnitude scaling approach to determine graduate students' perceptions of the relationship of 35 instructional attribute terms to the 4 motivational conditions from Keller's ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction) Model of Motivational Design. (29 references) (LRW)

Examines the impact of racial climate on the academic self-concept of minority (African American and Chicano) graduate students in the 1970s. It reports that minority females consistently lag behind males in views of academic self-concept and characterizes the graduate-school racial climate as having low trust and little interaction among groups.…

Used Cognitive Mapping Task (CMT) to perform in-depth content analysis of conceptualizations of two novice and two experienced counselors about change in counseling and about specific client problems. Analysis of CMTs suggests that novices in the study lacked the domain-specific schemata that may aid experienced counselors in efficiently…

Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Graduate Scholars Program for minority students is supported by systems that create a social-psychological "comfort zone" for participating graduate students. The program encourages interdisciplinary cooperation and a balance between the disparate concerns and perspectives of the student and…

Delineates specific steps necessary to successfully recruit and retain American Indians in counselor training programs, proposes a curriculum for training counselors to effectively provide services to American Indians with disabilities, and discusses the responsibility of counselor educators to concern themselves with the "job placement" of their…

Examines issues surrounding socioethical topics. Argues that professional responsibility operates at three distinct but interconnected levels: individual (moral-philosophical), professional (sociological), and societal (multidisciplinary). Argues that the nature of sociology inevitably leads to facing ethical issues as professional rather than…