Formal anonymous exit surveys were administered to 747 former cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy from years 2002 to 2011. The cadet honor code specifically states, "We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." Nevertheless, survey results indicated there was a significant, measurable toleration of dishonesty…

Students often complain about their perceived disconnect between the time and effort spent studying and their subsequent performance on exams. Robert Bjork's research asserts that retrieval of stored information acts as a memory modifier, and that using tests as learning events creates "desirable difficulties that enhance learning."…

Well before the examinations grade crisis of 2012, Michael Gove had set out clear intentions for reforming public examinations. Though he claimed to be improving examinations and assessment by replicating practices that took place in high-performing countries and thus improving the ability of the UK economy to "compete", this…

The importance of spatial ability for success in a variety of domains, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), is widely acknowledged. Yet, students with high spatial ability are rarely identified, as Talent Searches for academically talented students focus on identifying high mathematical and verbal abilities.…

This study investigates the relationship between skills that underpin mathematical word problems and those that underpin numerical operations, such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Sixty children aged 6-7 years were tested on measures of mathematical ability, reading accuracy, reading comprehension, verbal intelligence and…

Source memory zROC slopes change from below 1 to above 1 depending on which source gets the strongest learning. This effect has been attributed to memory processes, either in terms of a threshold source recollection process or changes in the variability of continuous source evidence. We propose 2 decision mechanisms that can produce the slope…

Literature on auditory distraction has generally focused on the effects of particular kinds of sounds on attention to target stimuli. In support of extensive previous findings that have demonstrated the special role of language as an auditory distractor, we found that a concurrent speech stream impaired recall of a short lecture, especially for…

Purpose: There is general consensus that the ability to repeat nonsense words is related to vocabulary size in young children, but there is considerable debate about the nature of the relationship and the mechanisms that underlie it. Research with adults has proposed a shared neural substrate for nonword repetition (NWR) and language production,…

A gap exists between students' employment needs and higher education offerings. Thus, developing the capability to meet the learning needs of students in supporting their future aspirations should be facilitated. To bridge this gap in practice, this study uses multiple methods (i.e., nominal group technique and instructional systems development)…

Michael Gove has made examination reform a marked feature of his period as Education Secretary in the coalition government, although he has not always found it easy to bring about the changes he feels so strongly about, in the face of widespread opposition from teachers and educationists. This article seeks to analyse the Education Secretary's…

Emotions displayed by others are pivotal ingredients of the decisions we make in social contexts. However, most of the research to date has focused on the subjective emotion of the decider rather than on the emotional expressions of the partners in the interaction. The present investigation was designed to explore how happy and angry facial…

The assessment of test data for the presence of differential item functioning (DIF) is a key component of instrument development and validation. Among the many methods that have been used successfully in such analyses is the mixture modeling approach. Using this approach to identify the presence of DIF has been touted as potentially superior for…

This article reports seven new, original findings, based on 4 experiments, 56 environmental scenes, and 71 participants, on how the factors of area over which one could walk (boundary height, boundary porosity, and boundary proximity) influence perceived spaciousness or enclosure. Perceived spaciousness was most strongly related by the area over…

This experimental study examined the effects of professor gender, professor race, and student gender on student ratings of teaching effectiveness and amount learned. After watching a three-minute engineering lecture presented by a computer-animated professor who varied by gender and race (African American, White), female and male undergraduates…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of case studies on learning outcomes, attitudes toward instructions, and team shared mental models (SMM) in a team-based learning environment in an undergraduate educational psychology course. Approximately 105 students who participated in this study were randomly assigned to either a case-study…