Social trust (i.e., belief that people are generally fair and trustworthy) is important to the functioning of democracies, and trend studies show it has declined. We test hypotheses concerning the development of these beliefs in adolescence. Based on surveys of 1,535 adolescents collected over 2 years, we find that middle and late adolescents had…

This study uses a work stress theoretical framework to examine the effects of direct and indirect client violence on a randomly selected national sample of MSW and BSW social work students from the National Association of Social Workers (N=595). Client violence variables were analyzed in relationship to fear of future violence and occupational…

The Functional Measurement approach, proposed within the theoretical framework of Information Integration Theory (Anderson, 1981, 1982), can be a useful multi-attribute analysis tool. Compared to the majority of statistical models, the averaging model can account for interaction effects without adding complexity. The R-Average method (Vidotto &…

Despite three decades of advances in information and communications technology (ICT) and a generation of research on cognition and new pedagogical strategies, the field of assessment has not progressed much beyond paper-and-pencil item-based tests. Research has shown these instruments are not valid measures of sophisticated intellectual…

An online interactive geometry item was developed to explore students' abilities to create prototypical and "tilted" rectangles out of line segments. The item was administered to 1,002 students. The responses to the item were hand-coded as correct, incorrect, or incorrect with possible evidence of a misconception. A variation of the nearest…

Fifty years of theory and research offer increasing levels of support for the assertion that principal leadership makes a difference in the quality of schooling, school development, and student learning. In the current context of global education reform, however, recent inquiries have focused on identifying how teams of school leaders contribute…

It has been reported in the literature that the disparities of student achievement within schools are often larger than the disparity across schools. In the secondary school context, analysing student achievement data at department level enables a fine-grained approach to identifying particular departments and teachers within them that are…

Critical thinking is a valued educational outcome; however, little is known about whether psychology courses, especially ones such as research methods courses that might be expected to promote critical thinking skills, actually improve them. We compared the acquisition of critical thinking skills for analyzing psychological arguments in 3 groups…

Studies show that children who use relational aggression process social information in unique ways; however, findings have been inconsistent and limited by methodological weaknesses. This short-term longitudinal study examined developmental changes in 245 (49% female; ages 8-13) 3rd through 8th graders' normative beliefs about relational…

This study describes research used for supporting a validity argument for a new Spanish Listening Exam, whose scores are intended to place examinees into appropriate levels of university Spanish classes. This study contributes to the field of argument-based approaches to language assessment by implementing Bachman's (2005) assessment use argument…

This study examined the effect of summarization as a generative learning strategy of the readers' performance on reading comprehension, in general, and reading comprehension display, referential and inferential questions in particular. The subjects in this study were 61 high school students. They were assigned to two groups--control and…

This article demonstrates how the broad and narrow abilities and processes that comprise Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory and their relations to specific academic outcomes have begun to transform our current understanding of the definition of and methods for identifying specific learning disability (SLD), particularly in the school setting. The…

The authors report the contextualization of effect sizes within mathematics anxiety research, and more specifically within research using the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) and the MARS for Adolescents (MARS-A). The effect sizes from 45 studies were characterized by graphing confidence intervals (CIs) across studies involving (a) adults…

This article presents an exploratory study aimed at the identification of students' levels of understanding in spherical geometry as van Hiele did for Euclidean geometry. To do this, we developed and implemented a spherical geometry course for student mathematics teachers. Six structured, "task-based interviews" were held with eight student…

Deliberate practice--meaning drill-like practice under the direction of a coach--is key to developing expertise in sports and music. But working professionals and businesspeople typically have no time for practice. We propose deliberate performance as a type of practice that professionals and businesspeople can pursue while they work as a way to…