The treatment of socially oriented underachievers: A case study

Socially oriented underachievers are students who work for the rewards of social interaction rather than for those of academic achievement. A case report is presented which outlines the treatment of a socially oriented underachiever. The successful treatment employed behavior modification techniques and consisted, essentially, of rewarding the entire class for academic improvement shown by the underachiever.     

The golem: Uncertainty and communicating science

This paper elaborates on the golem metaphor as a way of understanding uncertainty in science. Its implications for the ethics of communicating science are explored.     

Ethical issues in communicating science

Most of the publicized work on scientific ethics concentrates on establishing professional norms and avoiding misconduct. The successful communication of science is the responsibility of all involved in the process. In one study, the increased incidence of autism and other social developmental disorders in males was investigated by examining individuals with Turner's syndrome (XO females). In the national newspaper this became "Genetic X-factor explains why boys will always be boys". The steps by which a study on developmental disorders, published in a highly prestigious journal, was transformed into an article in the science section which 'explained' the socially expected gender-based behavior of genetically normal children are fascinating and, unfortunately far too typical. The scientists wrote an excellent article that has just one sentence at the end that hesitantly suggests that the findings might, with further study, have some relevance to understanding normal behavior. The general interest article in the front of the journal gave a good account of the research, but suggested more strongly that there could be an in-built biological dimorphism in social cognition. This was misrepresented in the press as proof of gender differences that "undermines the trend towards sexual equality", and both illustrates cultural bias and provides fodder for feminist critiques of science. The study has been made to appear to be biased in favor of justifying the social structure of society, and yet it was the translation from the scientific study to national news that produced this transformation to biased genetic determinism. It is poor communication of the actual science, coupled with a lack of skepticism on the part of the public, that contributes to such a misapplication of science. Scientists should resist the urge to generalize their results to make them more compelling. The science community should not allow misconstructions of scientific facts to go unchallenged. Journalists, for both the scientific publication and the newspaper, should resist the inclination to embellish the finding with social significance that is not present. For their part, readers must be doubly skeptical of any finding that appears to underwrite any current social hierarchy. We are all responsible for a communication and interpretation of science that is as accurate and socially responsible as possible.     

Shape equivalence under perspective and projective transformations

When a planar shape is viewed obliquely, it is deformed by a perspective deformation. If the visual system were to pick up geometrical invariants from such projections, these would necessarily be invariant under the wider class of projective transformations. To what extent can the visual system tell the difference between perspective and nonperspective but still projective deformations of shapes? To investigate this, observers were asked to indicate which of two test patterns most resembled a standard pattern. The test patterns were related to the standard pattern by a perspective or projective transformation, or they were completely unrelated. Performance was slightly better in a matching task with perspective and unrelated test patterns (92.6%) than in a projective-random matching task (88.8%). In a direct comparison, participants had a small preference (58.5%) for the perspectively related patterns over the projectively related ones. Preferences were based on the values of the transformation parameters (slant and shear). Hence, perspective and projective transformations yielded perceptual differences, but they were not treated in a categorically different manner by the human visual system.     

Croyances de contrôle et rendement scolaire chez des élèves francophones du primaire au Québec

Recent research in educational psychology, both in the United States and Europe, suggested that students' control beliefs must be considered to understand interindividual variations in students' personal engagement in learning and academic achievement. The present study was conducted with 780 French-speaking elementary school children from grade four to six. The objectives were to examine: (1) the relation between dimensions of control beliefs, (2) whether there were age-related changes in children's control beliefs, and (3) the relation between control beliefs and academic achievement across school grades. Results showed that the relations between dimensions of control beliefs and children's judgements about their importance in school achievement were stable across school grades. No relation was found between children's judgements about usefulness of specific means and academic achievement, but children's beliefs about their capacity to use these means was a powerful predictor of academic achievement. The discussion focuses on similarities and dissimilarities of these findings with those of studies conducted in the United States and Europe.     

Perceived effectiveness of school psychological services: A comparative study

In order to isolate variables present in school psychologists which may enhance effective delivery of school psychological service, supervisors of psychological services, classroom teachers, and building principals within the state of Iowa were asked to evaluate the performance of their school psychologist in 10 functional areas. Both supervisors and classroom teachers perceived those school psychologists with 4–9 years experience as the most effective. Teaching experience, as a requirement for school psychology certification, did not receive support. The level of training for the psychologist (degree) yielded conflicting results among the raters.     

Methodological issues in school-based evaluation

Methodology in school-based evaluation is importantly affected by economic and ethical constraints often absent or less pressing than in larger-scale evaluations. These and other factors also operate in the specialized school-based evaluations such as that of school psychological services. Defensible evaluation designs must take into account the impossibility of random assignment and reduced options for the use of control groups. In addition there are numerous pressures on the construction and deployment of measuring devices and a need for ingenuity in performing statistical analyses. This article explicates these issues and outlines alternative approaches to methodology which can result in usable data for school decision making.     

Can career self-directedness be improved through counseling?

We examine the learnability, antecedents and outcomes of career self-directedness using a longitudinal dataset of Flemish career counseling clients. The results show that the career counseling clients improved their career self-directedness during the counseling and that this improvement lasted for at least 6 months. Furthermore, we found career self-directedness to be explained in a significant way by self-awareness and adaptability, two competences identified by Hall [Hall, D. T. (1996). Protean careers in the 21st century. Academy of Management Executive, 10(4), 8-16; Hall, D. T. (2004). The protean career: A quarter-century journey. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 1-13] as crucial for steering one’s career. Also, career self-directedness related positively to training participation, job mobility and career satisfaction. The main implications of our findings for the protean career and the career counseling literature are discussed.