Describes the classification of minorities developed by J. Ogbu as autonomous, voluntary (immigrant), and involuntary (nonimmigrant) and explains Ogbu's cultural ecological theory of minority school performance. Implications of the theory for pedagogy are explored. The typology of minority groups is regarded as a heuristic device for analysis.…

Examines theoretical and methodological concerns of the new ethnographic writing, analyzing writing practices of both professional anthropologists and student ethnographers who undertake ethnographic research as part of a modern languages degree course in universities in the United Kingdom. Emphasis is on qualitative writing as a heuristic…

Hypothesizes that pharmacological and expectancy effects may be two principles that govern caffeine consumption in the same way they affect other drug use. Tests this theory through a balanced placebo design on 100 male undergraduate students. Expectancy set and caffeine content appeared equally powerful, and worked additionally, to affect…

Explains concept mapping as a heuristic device that is helpful in visualizing the relationships between and among ideas. Highlights include how to begin a map; brainstorming; map applications, including document or information summaries and writing composition; and mind mapping to strengthen note-taking. (LRW)

Presents a consideration of sexual harassment laws that are intended to underscore the variety of heuristic possibilities offered by inquiry into communication-based laws, for both communication administrators and educators. Concludes that communication administration, communication education, and evolving communication-based legal standards and…

In this paper, the author argues that the quantity, superabundance of information, easy availability, and quick access to information in cyberspace may engender critical thinking and the optimization of reasonableness. This point is different from, but presupposes, the commonplace view that critical thinking abilities, criteria, processes, and…

An eye-movement monitoring experiment was carried out to examine the effects of the difficulty of the problem (simple versus complex problems) and the type of figure (figure 1 or figure 4) on the time course of processing categorical syllogisms. The results showed that the course of influence for these two factors is different. We found early…

This note describes the Kaldor-Hicks (KH) tableau format as a framework for distributional accounting in cost-benefit analysis and policy evaluation. The KH tableau format can serve as a heuristic aid for teaching microeconomics-based policy analysis, and offer insight to policy analysts and decisionmakers beyond conventional efficiency analysis.

This article describes a brief heuristics demonstration and offers suggestions for personalizing examples of heuristics by making them relevant to students. Students complete a handout asking for 4 judgments illustrative of such heuristics. The decisions are cast in the context of students' daily lives at their particular university. After the…

The purpose of this article is to attempt to reclaim the concept of foundations of power as a framework of analysis and as an approach to influencing policy. The first section briefly re-examines the policy area that developed in the late 20th century United States and suggests that it was an illusion based on a small area of consensus and a large…

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…

Poliheuristic (PH) theory models foreign policy decisions using a two-stage process. The first step eliminates alternatives on the basis of a simplifying heuristic. The second step involves a selection from among the remaining alternatives and can employ a more rational and compensatory means of processing information. The PH model posits that…

Albert Einstein's theory of the Brownian motion, Marian von Smoluchowski's heuristic model, and Perrin's experimental results helped to bring the concept of molecules from a state of being a useful hypothesis in chemistry to objects existing in reality. Central to the theory of Brownian motion is the relation between mean particle displacement and…

A discovery-based experiment is developed depending on a "false assumption" that the students mistakenly assume they know the structure of a reaction product and are forced to reconcile observations that are inconsistent with this assumption. This experiment involves the chemistry of azulenes, an interesting class of intensely colored aromatic…

Philosophers of biology have long argued that Darwin's theory of evolution was qualitatively different from all earlier theories of evolution. Whereas Darwin's predecessors and contemporaries explained adaptation as the transformation of a species' ''essence,'' Darwin explained adaptation as the selective propagation of randomly occurring…