The Influence of Efficacy Beliefs on Teacher Performance and Student Success: Implications for Student Support Services

The influence of teachers’ efficacy beliefs on student achievement is well documented in educational literature. Efficacy beliefs are derived from sources of information teachers obtain from professional experiences. This article provides student support services personnel with an overview of efficacy beliefs and their impact on teachers’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A cognitive behavioral framework, rational emotive behavior therapy, is used to conceptualize ways efficacy beliefs may hinder teacher performance and student success. Implications for student support services and research are provided.     

“I Am Still With You”: Dementia and the Christian Wayfarer

Persons with dementia suffer not only from neuropathology but also from cultural norms that exalt agency, privilege rationality, equate worth with capacity, and discourage disability and dependence. In Christian theological context, however, these are faulty assumptions that harm people with dementia. Christian tradition affirms, rather, that humans are integrated, whole-person, embodied souls on a journey to God; dependent on others and on God; and endowed by God with intrinsic worth that is unrelated to capacities. Four theological parameters—creation, participation, lament, and song—enable resistance to prevalent toxic social norms and promote faithful Christian re-membering of people with dementia.     

Psychotherapy as a skilled practice

While psychotherapy is related to both science and art, it is primarily a craft activity requiring the development of skilful practice, epitomized by the discipline of the analytic attitude. In terms of the forms of knowledge outlined by Aristotle, this places psychotherapy in the realm of ‘technê’ (arts and craft) rather than epistêmê (science). In particular, the technê of psychotherapy is concerned with the development of phronesis (practical wisdom) in both patient and analyst and its ultimate aim is concerned with the promotion of eudaimonia, a state of well-being considered by Aristotle to be definitive of ‘the good life’. It is therefore fundamentally an ethical endeavour. The nature of psychotherapeutic skill is illustrated by analogy with three other forms of technê – music, meditation and pottery. Clinical examples illustrate the crafting of interpretations and the art of patient holding.     

Predictors of Appraisal and Psychological Well-Being in Alzheimer's Disease Family Caregivers

The objective of this study was to test a model of stress, appraisal, and adaptation in 114 family caregivers of patients diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (white non-Hispanic, N = 64; Hispanic-American, N = 50). Results of structural equation analysis show that appraised caregiver burden played a central role in determining the psychological well-being of family caregivers. The findings indicate that this mediating variable, negative caregiver appraisal, was predicted by increased functional limitations and behavioral disturbances in the patient, poorer perceived physical health, and lower levels of perceived emotional support. Contrary to a priori hypotheses, functional limitations in the patient also exhibited a direct association with caregiver depression. Further, patient cognitive impairment and caregiver ethnicity were not related to caregiver appraisal. Overall, these results support the role of appraised burden in mediating the relationships between caregiving factors and the adaptational outcome of depression. The implications of these findings, limitations of the study, and future directions are discussed.     

First-Order Frege Theory is Undecidable

The system whose only predicate is identity, whose only nonlogical vocabulary is the abstraction operator, and whose axioms are all first-order instances of Frege's Axiom V is shown to be undecidable.     

Classroom Interactions: Gender of Teacher,Gender of Student,and Classroom Subject

An observational study investigated the effects of gender of teacher, gender of student, and classroom subject (mathematics vs. English literature/language) on teacher–student interactions. A total of 597 high school students (294 males and 303 females) and 36 teachers (28 males and 8 females) were observed in either 18 mathematics classes or 18 literature/language classes. Students and teachers were predominately Caucasian, with the majority of students from a lower- or middle-class background. Observations were coded using the interactions for sex equity in classroom teaching (INTERSECT) observational instrument. It was found that female mathematics teachers, male literature/language teachers, and female literature/language teachers tended to interact somewhat more with male students than with female students. This tendency was not the result of male students having initiated more direct verbal interactions with teachers.     

Learned helplessness and immunization: sensitivity to response-reinforcer independence in immunized rats

In experiments 1 and 2, we examined the learned helplessness and immunization effects using a test in which appetitive responding was extinguished by delivering noncontingent reinforcers. Contrary to learned helplessness theory, "immunized" animals showed performance virtually identical to that of animals exposed only to inescapable shock, and different from nonshocked controls. Experiment 2 suggests that the helplessness effect and the lack of immunization are not due to direct response suppression resulting from shock. In Experiment 3, where the immunization effect was assessed by measuring the acquisition of a response to obtain food when there was a positive response-reinforcer contingency, immunization was observed. These results cannot be explained on the basis of proactive interference, but suggest that animals exposed to the immunization procedure acquire an expectancy of response-reinforcer independence during inescapable shock. Thus, immunization effects may reflect the differential expression of expectancies, rather than their differential acquisition as learned helplessness theory postulates.