Class Size and Student Achievement

Contents:
Introduction, p.1
Quasi-Experimental Studies, p.3
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Studies, p.15
Why Does Class Size Matter? Inferences from Existing Research, p.20
Implications of the Class-Size Findings, p.25
References, p.26
Appendix, p.29     

Vocational Souljourn Paradigm: A Model of Adult Development to Express Spiritual Wellness as Meaning,Being, and Doing in Work and Life

The author invites counselors to consider integrating spiritual, philosophical, and psychological ideas regarding work and life to encourage client well‐being. The Vocational Souljourn Paradigm is a model that can be used with adult clients who are exploring their work and life choices in a holistic and spiritual context. The variables meaning, being, and doing and the work paths Job, occupation, career, and vocation are defined. The model explains how dynamic interactions of meaning, being, and doing can propel an individual into a particular work/life path.     

The Many Faces of SocialIdentity: Implications for Political Psychology

Social identity is a concept that has been invented and reinvented across the social and behavioral science disciplines to provide a critical link between the psychology of the individual and the structure and function of social groups. This paper reviews the various definitions of social identity as it is used in different theoretical frameworks, drawing distinctions among person-based identities, relational (role-based) identities, group-based identities, and collective identities. The implications of these different conceptualizations of social identity for political psychology are discussed, with a call for integrative theory that draws on all four definitions interactively.     

Mental models of the earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood

This paper presents the results of an experiment which investigated elementary school children's conceptual knowledge about the earth. First-, 3rd-, and 5th- grade children were asked a series of questions about the shape of the earth. Children's responses to these questions revealed considerable apparent inconsistency. For example, many children said that the earth is round but also stated that it has an end or edge from which people could fall. A great deal of this apparent inconsistency could be explained by assuming that the children used, in a consistent fashion, a mental model of the earth other than the spherical earth model. Five alternative mental models of the earth were identified: the rectangular earth, the disc earth, the dual earth, the hollow sphere, and the flattened sphere. It is argued that these models are constrained by certain presuppositions which children form based on interpretations of their everyday experience. Some of these models (the rectangular earth and the disc earth) seem to be initial models children construct before they are exposed to the culturally accepted information that the earth is a sphere. In the process of knowledge acquisition, children appear to modify their initial models to make them more consistent with the culturally accepted model by gradually reinterpreting their presuppositions. Synthetic models (such as the hollow sphere and the flattened sphere) are generated by children as a solution to the problems arising from the inconsistency between their initial model of a flat earth and the culturally accepted, scientific model of a spherical earth. Children come to understand that the earth is a sphere only when the presuppositions that gave rise to their initial models have been reinterpreted.     

Resistance to extinction following habituation to behaviourally disruptive novel stimuli

Three experiments tested the prediction, derived from generalized frustration theory (Amsel, 1972), that habituation to behaviourally disruptive stimuli increases resistance to extinction in the runway. In each experiment, rats received initial consistent reinforcement (CRF) training and then either continued CRF (Groups C), partial reinforcement (PRF) training (Groups P), or CRF accompanied by presentations of a novel tactile, tone, or obstacle stimulus (Groups D) in Experiments 1-3, respectively. PRF increased resistance to extinction whether non-reinforcement disrupted behaviour (Experiment 1) or not (Experiments 2 and 3). The tactile and obstacle stimuli very substantially disrupted behaviour, and the tone produced a modest disruption of behaviour. All subjects habituated to the disruptive effects of these stimuli, but Group D was not more resistant to extinction than Group C in any experiment. The results suggest that non-reinforcement has unique stimulus properties, a consequence of which is that habituation to other sources of disruptive stimulation does not promote responding to non-reinforcement in extinction.     

Imaging the medial temporal lobe: exploring new dimensions

Cognitive scientists have used developments in functional imaging to explore the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in memory formation. Lesion studies have suggested that separate MTL subregions make distinct contributions to memory. Functional imaging of these distinct contributions, however, remains a challenge, because the proximity of the MTL substructures tests the spatial resolution limits of current techniques. Recent findings using electrophysiological measures of neural activity highlight the importance of using information from other imaging modalities. Integrating the different modalities of neuroimaging with lesion studies, and, further, combining modalities within experiments, will provide new insights into the function of MTL subregions.     

What are we really priming? Cue-based versus category-based processing of facial stimuli.

Results from 5 experiments provide converging evidence that automatic evaluation of faces in sequential priming paradigms reflects affective responses to phenotypic features per se rather than evaluation of the racial categories to which the faces belong. Experiment 1 demonstrates that African American facial primes with racially prototypic physical features facilitate more automatic negative evaluations than do other Black faces that are unambiguously categorizable as African American but have less prototypic features. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 further support the hypothesis that these differences reflect direct affective responses to physical features rather than differential categorization. Experiment 5 shows that automatic responses to facial primes correlate with cue-based but not category-based explicit measures of prejudice. Overall, these results suggest the existence of 2 distinct types of prejudice.     

What Does It Mean to Be an American? Patriotism,Nationalism, and American Identity After 9/11

The period of heightened nationalism in the United States that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 provided unusual conditions for investigating issues surrounding the distinction between patriotism and nationalism and the relationship between national identification and pluralistic values. In a survey of national identity and social attitudes conducted in late September 2001, two different definitions of national unity were inserted in the introduction to the questionnaire in an attempt to prime activation of different conceptualizations of nationality. Results demonstrated that the priming conditions did have an effect on the pattern of interrelationships among measures of patriotism, nationalism, and tolerance for cultural diversity.     

Effects of postidentification feedback on eyewitness identification and nonidentification confidence

Two experiments investigated new dimensions of the effect of confirming feedback on eyewitness identification confidence using target-absent and target-present lineups and (previously unused) unbiased witness instructions (i.e., "offender not present" option highlighted). In Experiment 1, participants viewed a crime video and were later asked to try to identify the thief from an 8-person target-absent photo array. Feedback inflated witness confidence for both mistaken identifications and correct lineup rejections. With target-present lineups in Experiment 2, feedback inflated confidence for correct and mistaken identifications and lineup rejections. Although feedback had no influence on the confidence-accuracy correlation, it produced clear overconfidence. Confidence inflation varied with the confidence measure reference point (i.e., retrospective vs. current confidence) and identification response latency.