Gregg Brownell

Formal Reasoning Ability in Preservice Elementary Education Students: Matched to the Technology Education Task at Hand?.

AbstractApplications of computers and associated technologies in education often call for students to use and develop formal reasoning skills. Preservice teachers are often expected to possess the formal reasoning skills needed to use technology in this manner and later, as teachers, to instruct their students in such applications of technology. This study examines the formal reasoning abilities of 147 preservice elementary education students enrolled in a computer education course at a large mid-western university via the Arlin Test of Formal Reasoning (ATFR). A descriptive picture of students’ abilities for the categories of concrete, high concrete, transitional, low formal, and formal reasoning is presented. Possible correlations between subjects’ ages and self-reported grade point averages and their scores on the ATFR are investigated. Implications for the schools and for computer and technology courses for preservice teachers are discussed.

Macintosh Clip Art

AbstractAs schools increasingly integrate computers and technology into the curriculum, students are given the opportunity to develop skills deemed important in an Information Age society. Two groups identified as at risk regarding such opportunities are women and minorities. There appears to be a cultural stereotype that casts computers and technology as the domain of white males. Cues regarding this stereotype come from many sources, one of which may be the computer itself. This study investigated the representation of women and minorities in computer clip art available for the Macintosh computer and raised the following question: Are women and minorities represented in the clip art they use on the computer, or are they primarily exposed to images of white males? Two coders rated 1,474 images of Macintosh computer clip art from five different software publishers. A chi-square test revealed that women were underrepresented and men overrepresented (p < .001) when compared to the proportion of each group i...