J. Ronald Gentile

TIME ESTIMATION BY HYPERACTIVE AND NORMAL CHILDREN

In two studies [a pilot (12 7- to 10-yr.-olds) and a main study (100 8- to 12-yr.-olds)] hyperactive and normal children were compared on the ability to estimate time intervals ranging from 7 to 60 sec. The differences between estimated and elapsed time were larger for hyperactives than for normals, with the differences between the groups increasing with the length of the interval to be estimated.

Classroom Assessment and Grading to Assure Mastery

Achieving learning standards is at the forefront of current educational philosophy, and is the goal of sound educational practice. That “all children can learn” and there will be “no child left behind” presume that teaching and assessment practices must benefit all children. Agreement in principle is nearly universal. Practical implementation, however, is another matter. One philosophy of learning and instruction that has a long history of targeting instruction and achievement for all students is mastery learning. This article examines (a) fundamental tenets that mastery learning is built upon, (b) the clear connection between learning standards and mastery learning, and (c) how mastery is often erroneously implemented. It then outlines the defining features of mastery and how to implement them. These defining features include developing clear objectives, setting a mastery standard, using criterion-referenced assessments, and grading incentives for students to learn beyond initial mastery.

Recall After Relearning by Fast and Slow Learners

Abstract Rates of forgetting among fast and slow learners have been shown to be equivalent if learners are equated for amount of original learning on a memorization task. This finding is quite robust across a variety of learning tasks, materials, and experimental procedures. The authors of the present study replicated these findings with fourth and fifth graders, showing that, once they learned a poem to the same criterion level (75–90% correct), the fast and slow learners recalled approximately the same amount of the poem after 7 days. The experiment was extended by having the students relearn the poem to the same criterion level and testing their retention. After students were re-equated on relearning the poem, however, fast learners recalled significantly more than slow learners at both 14-day and 28-day intervals. Thus, the forgetting curves for fast and slow learners were the same after original learning, but different after relearning. Possible causes of this difference are discussed in terms of the...

Retention by "Fast" and "Slow" Learners.

Abstract Four experiments were conducted to replicate and extend the findings by Shuell and Keppel (1970) as well as others, that when properly equated for original learning, “fast” and “slow” learners have parallel forgetting curves. In Experiments I and II, the Shuell-Keppel findings, originally demonstrated on American students learning lists of words, were replicated on samples of Nigerian students. In Experiments III and IV, Nigerian and American students, respectively, learned poems to a criterion of 75–90% correct and were tested for retention. In all studies, “fast” and “slow” learners were brought to a similar learning criterion, with the result that their forgetting curves were parallel.

Mastery Learning and the Decreasing Variability Hypothesis.

Abstract Performance on successive units of achievement in graduate classrooms using mastery learning procedures was used to test two variations of Blooms decreasing variability hypothesis—namely, that under the favorable conditions of mastery learning, differences in faster and slower learners will decrease over successive units, leading to (a) smaller variances on successive units and (b) smaller correlations between an initial measure of aptitude and achievement on successive units. The data from the four classrooms studied do not support the decreasing variability hypothesis; rather, they show no change over time.

Cognitive developmental level, gender, and the development of learned helplessness on mathematical calculation and reasoning tasks*

The purposes of the study were, theoretically, to extend learned helplessness findings along the cognitive developmental dimension and, practically, to assess the extent to which learned helplessness in a mathematical calculation task transfers to a mathematical reasoning task. One hundred twenty-eight adolescents were assigned to appropriate treatments in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial arrangement (formal vs concrete operational level; male vs female; strategy training vs no training; helplessness treatment vs controls), with percentage correct and incorrect on a calculation and a reasoning task, respectively, as dependent variables. Large and significant main effects occurred for all factors; however, none of the interaction effects was significant. There was thus no differential advantage to persons of either gender, nor to those of the formal reasoning stage of development, in either resisting the effects of learned helplessness or in benefiting from strategy training.

Measuring Growth in Education.

The authors argue that the usefulness and legitimacy of measuring student growth depend upon the purpose for which the scores will be used. The investigator or instructor should not attempt to discriminate among individual students on the basis of gain scores because of the unreliability of such scores. The ranking of students in terms of gains is almost always too unreliable to be useful or defensible. On the other hand, the problem of unreliability creates much less difficulty when one is interested in measuring overall treatment effectiveness or in discriminating among situations rather than individuals. The authors conclude that there are many situations in education in which the measurement of student growth is possible, justifiable, and informative.