William M. Stallings

Freedom from External Evaluation.

MAEHR, MARTIN L., and STALLINGS, WILLIAM M. Freedom from External Evaluation. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 177-185. 2 studies were conducted in which the effects of internal and external evaluation on performand motivation were considered. A major finding was that Ss showed a continued interest in difficult tasks if they had worked on them under internal conditions. The continued interest in difficult tasks was apparently lessened by the external conditions. This effect was noted particularly in the case of high need achievement boys. Differences in performance levels under the 2 conditions were inconsistent, leading to the conclusion that the effect of the evaluation conditions on immediate performance may not be as profound and pervasive as common sense might suggest. Implications for theory as well as educational practice are discussed.

Ethnographic and Experimental Hypotheses in Educational Research1

formulate and test specific hypotheses as to why these changes are taking place. Vocabulary has been shown to be largely a function of amount and type of reading both in school and out. What are people reading? How much is television reducing reading time? Are students in fact spending less time on learning to add, subtract, multiply, and divide? What are they doing instead of learning the rules of punctuation, capitalization, and language usage? What specific activities are resulting in the womens gains in creativity, mechanical reasoning, and visualization? What can we learn about the whole field of problem solving, reasoning, and mathematics from relating specific student activities with specific educational outcomes? Are the newer courses adding valuable insights or just talcing away time from the basic skills?

The Quality of Research Articles in the "Journal of Educational Research," 1970 and 1980.

AbstractThe empirical articles in the Journal of Educational Research in 1970 and 1980 were analyzed in order to determine if there were qualitative differences. Several quality indicators were used including statistics, focus of study, external funding, type of study, type of explanation, and reference characteristics. Improvement was found in eight of thirteen indicators.

Mind Your p’s and Alphas

In the educational research literature, alpha and p are often conflated. Paradoxically, alpha retains a prominent place in textbook discussions of such topics as statistical hypothesis testing, multivariate analysis, power, and multiple comparisons, whereas it seems to have been supplanted by p in the results sections of journal articles. The unique contributions of both alpha and p are discussed and a plea is made for using both conventions in summarizing the outcomes of tests of significance.

Student Attitudes Toward Grades and Grading.

(1970). Student Attitudes toward Grades and Grading. Improving College and University Teaching: Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 66-68.

Teacher Licensure Test Job Analysis Response by Gender, Race, and Age: Secondary Science and Mathematics.

This study addressed issues raised in the literature on science and mathematics teacher certification testing concerning the validity of job analysis data and the test domain defined by the job analysis. More specifically, the issues addressed are those aasociated with race, gender, and age. Questionnaires were sent to 2,801 mathematics and 2,468 science teachers or teacher supervisors identified by the Georgia Department of Education as certified in these fields. A total of 25 different forms of the Georgia Teacher Certification Test had been developed to represent the fields of secondary certification (grades 7 through 12) in the state. The forms wer..: distinguished by task statements pertinent to particular subjects taught; the science form had 148 unique task statements, while the mathematics form had 160 such statements. For science and mathematics teachers, respectively, 1,384 and 1,600 usable responses were available. Teachers rated the task statements by indicating for each one whether they actually performed the task, its importance to the learning process, and the possibility of successful performance by minimally competent teachers. Task statement content clusters were identified as well as simple effects and group mean differences. Results indicate significant effects based on race for science teachers, but no other significant effects based on race, sex, or age. Fourteen data tables and six graphs present study data. (TJH) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ********************************t******.********************************

A Comparison of Television and Audio Presentations of the MLA French Listening Examination.

AbstractAlthough nonverbal cues are often available in real-life communication, listening is usually tested by aural stimuli broadcast from an audio-tape. It would seem that testing listening comprehension might be improved by using television to offer nonverbal cues in addition to aural stimuli. For this study, a video-tape was made from the script of the Form MB Modern Language Association (MLA) French Listening Examination. An audio-tape was recorded from the video-tape. Subjects were randomly assigned to be tested by television or by audio- tape. No significant differences were found between the mean scores of students tested by the two media. The attitude of students toward being tested by television was slightly unfavorable.

Are the Critics Right About MACOS

Abstract Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) has been perhaps the most controversial curriculum in Americas schools. Critics have charged that MACOS contributes to an acceptance of practices repugnant to a large segment of the population. These practices include: murder, senilicide, female infanticide, divorce, cannibalism, and cruelty to animals. The present study investigated the effects of MACOS on the attitudes of 49 fourth-grade students toward these practices and compared them with the attitudes of 46 non-MACOS students. A pre and posttest attitudinal inventory (with six sub-scales) was administered to both groups. Hotellings T was used to compare pretest-posttest differences between the two groups. It was concluded that MACOS did not contribute to an acceptance of the six practices investigated.

Book Reviews : Basic Math for Social Scientists: Concepts, by Timothy M. Hagle. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 1995, 95 pp

William M. Stallings Department of Educational Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303-3083. For the narrator of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, eating a madeleine evoked memories of his childhood and adolescence. For me, reviewing Hagle’s Basic Math for Social Scientists: Concepts unburied memories of my unsuccessful undergraduate engineering days, memories in which the threat of being drafted for the Korean War are commingled with the honky-tonk songs of Ernest Tubb, Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera with Milton Cross, and the mysteries of calculus with its chain rule, L’Hospital’s rule, and integration by parts. As my life turned out, I have used some of my undergraduate math: for celestial navigation in the Navy, as a high school teacher of math and chemistry, and as a professor of educational research and evaluation.

Book Reviews : 100 Statistical Tests, by Gopal K. Kanji. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993, 216 pp

William M. Stallings Georgia State University, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30303-3083. In going through Gopal K. Kanji’s 100 Statistical Tests the reader is like a guest at a large cocktail party. Some tests are old friends; some (similar to divorced or newly remarried female colleagues) have unfamiliar names attached to familiar faces or formulas. With still others there is a nodding acquaintance (&dquo;I think I met that test during graduate school. Strangest of all are those that look like patrons at a &dquo;Star Wars&dquo;’ bar for statisticians, for example, the tests for circular data. I enjoyed seeing old friends and making