Between-teacher differences in homework assignments and the development of students' homework effort, homework emotions, and achievement.

The study examines whether teachers' homework objectives, implementation practices, and attitudes toward parental involvement are associated with the development of students' homework effort, homework emotions, and achievement during Grade 8. A total of 63 teachers (40 male, 23 female; mean teaching experience: M = 17.5 years) of French as a 2nd language and their 1,299 Grade 8 students (51.2% female; mean age at first measurement point: M = 13.84, SD = 0.56) participated in the study. In multilevel models, teachers' homework attitudes and behaviors were specified to predict outcomes at the end of Grade 8, controlling for covariates at the beginning of Grade 8. A low emphasis on drill and practice tasks and a high emphasis on motivation were associated with favorable developments in homework effort and achievement. Controlling homework assignments were associated with less homework effort and more negative homework emotions; the opposite pattern was found for students whose teacher supported student homework autonomy rather than parental homework involvement. The authors call for a systematic integration of findings from homework research in teacher training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomous motivation for teaching: How self-determined teaching may lead to self-determined learning.

This study examined teachers' experience of autonomous motivation for teaching and its correlates in teachers and students. It was hypothesized that teachers would perceive various motivations posited by E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan's (2000) self-determination theory as falling along a continuum of autonomous motivation for teaching. Autonomous motivation for teaching was predicted to be associated positively with teachers' sense of personal accomplishment and negatively with emotional exhaustion. Most important, teachers' self-reported autonomous motivation for teaching was expected to promote students' self-reported autonomous motivation for learning by enhancing teachers' autonomy-supportive behavior, as indicated by students' reports. Results from a sample of 132 Israeli teachers and their 1,255 students were consistent with the hypotheses. Discussion focuses on the importance of the experience of autonomous motivation for teaching for teachers and students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The teacher and student as Pygmalions: Joint effects of teacher and student expectations.

Examined the effects of teachers' expectations about students and students' expectations about teachers on the performance and attitudes of both participants. 60 female undergraduates were designated as teachers and were led to expect a high- or low-ability student, and a further 60 Ss acting as students were independently led to expect a teacher of low or high competence. Teachers and students were then randomly paired in a teaching session. Results show that student performance was a function of the teacher's expectations. In addition, teachers' attitudes and rated competence were affected by their expectation regarding the student, and students' attitudes were affected by their expectation about the teacher. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intern Self-Care: An Exploratory Study Into Strategy Use and Effectiveness.

In this exploratory study, 363 interns were surveyed to assess the frequency of use and effectiveness of self-care strategies used during the internship year. Among the most frequently used strategies were family and friend social support, active problem solving, and humor. The most effective strategies were family and friend social support, seeking pleasurable experiences, and humor. A strong positive relationship was found between total scores for Frequency and Effectiveness subscales, and women reported significantly more use and effectiveness of strategies. Recommendations and resources are provided for interns and internship sites that seek to further understand and encourage intern self-care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pathological forms of narcissism and perceived stress during the transition to the university: The mediating role of humor styles.

The way individuals use humor is likely to be influenced by how they feel about themselves. The goal of the present studies was to examine the association between the pathological forms of narcissism (grandiose and vulnerable narcissism) and humor styles in Jewish Israeli undergraduate samples as they made the adjustment to being university students. Study 1 (N = 187) found that grandiose narcissism was positively associated with adaptive humor, whereas vulnerable narcissism was negatively associated with adaptive humor and positively associated with maladaptive humor. Study 2 (N = 251) found that humor styles mediated the associations between the pathological forms of narcissism and perceived stress. There was no evidence of any moderating effect of humor styles on the relationship between the pathological forms of narcissism and perceived stress. These findings are discussed in terms of the role that humor may play in explaining the association between the pathological forms of narcissism and perceived stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cyclic AMP analogues increase excitability and enhance epileptiform activity in rat neocortex in vitro

Since humor has been found to facilitate such generative pursuits as psychotherapy, teaching, and nursing, and been associated with intimacy, it was hypothesized that high levels of humor are associated with high levels of generativity. The Measures of Psychosocial Development (measuring generativity), Situational Humor Response Questionnaire, and Coping Humor Scale were given to 56 subjects. Those scoring high on generativity scored significantly higher on both measures of humor than those scoring low in generativity. It was conjectured that humor may facilitate generativity through such mediating variables as intimacy and creativity as well as through stress reduction.     

Coping humour, stress, and cognitive appraisals.

Investigated relationships between sense of humor and cognitive appraisals (CAs) and reappraisals of a potentially stressful event. CAs by 44 female university students for an academic examination were obtained at several points in time. Ss with high scores on the Coping Humor scale by R. A. Martin and H. M. Lefcourt (see record 1984-15058-001) appraised the exam as more of a positive challenge. In their reappraisals, high humor Ss' ratings of importance and positive challenge were positively related to performance on the exam, whereas for low humor Ss this relationship was negative. High humor Ss adjusted their expectations on the next exam on the basis of performance on the previous exam, whereas low humor Ss did not. Sense of humor was negatively related to both perceived stress and dysfunctional standards for self-evaluation. Results support the proposal that a sense of humor may facilitate coping and adjustment. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use and effectiveness of a comparison routine in diverse secondary content classrooms.

The purpose of this investigation was to explore teachers' use and effectiveness of a comparison routine to help students understand comparisons of important content information in secondary content classes containing students of diverse ability. Various research methodologies, including single-subject and large-group experimental designs, were used. Measures included students' knowledge of information involving comparisons, the numbers and types of comparisons teachers used, teachers' use of the instructional routine, and teachers' and students' satisfaction with the instruction. Use of the routine led to significantly better retention and expression of information by students in the experimental condition compared with students participating in a traditional lecture-discussion format. Teachers easily learned the routine, delivered more complete instruction, and used the routine to teach regularly scheduled curricula. Teachers indicated that they were satisfied with the routine; in general, students were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the routine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss.

A field study was conducted to discover how a manager's use of 9 different influence tactics is related to target task commitment and the manager's effectiveness. The variables were measured with a questionnaire filled out by subordinates, peers, and the boss of each manager. The most effective tactics were rational persuasion, inspirational appeal, and consultation; the least effective tactics were pressure, coalition, and legitimating. Ingratiation and exchange were moderately effective for influencing subordinates and peers but were not effective for influencing superiors. Inspirational appeal, ingratiation, and pressure were used most in a downward direction; personal appeal, exchange, and legitimating were used most in a lateral direction; coalitions were used most in lateral and upward directions; and rational persuasion was used most in an upward direction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental Changes in Teachers' Beliefs About Critical-Thinking Activities.

Inservice, preservice, and prospective teachers and nonteacher controls (N=408) participated in a cross-sectional study of the development of beliefs about use of critical-thinking (CT) activities with different learner populations. Teachers' self-selection of their careers was associated with strong support for high-CT activities for both high- and low-advantage learners. Preservice education was associated with reduced support for (a) high-CT activities for high-advantage learners and (b) low-CT activities for both learner populations. Inservice education and teaching experience were associated with slightly reduced support for high-CT activities for low-advantage learners. Preservice education seems a propitious time for promoting changes in CT-related beliefs. From the viewpoint of CT advocates, initiatives are needed to counter the apparent reductions in teachers' support for high-CT activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' attitudes toward change and subsequent improvements in classroom teaching.

The relation between teachers' attitudes toward teaching practices presented in inservice training and the subsequent use of these practices was investigated. Three groups of junior high teachers (N?=?19) attended five workshops on effective teaching and received different between-workshop activities. Pre- to posttraining observations, questionnaires, and interviews were used to assess behavior changes and attitudes. Correlational analyses indicated that teachers' posttraining ratings of the importance of using the practices (philosophical acceptance) was predictive of their use by teachers. Qualitative data analyses revealed that improving teachers differed from nonimproving teachers in their willingness to experiment in their classrooms and in their growth in self-efficacy. Nonimproving teachers tended to defend their natural style of teaching, to attempt few changes, and to have low expectations for themselves and for their students. Staff developers need to attend to philosophical acceptance, self-efficacy, and the importance of the suggested practices during inservice training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of employee's sex and threatening versus pleading appeals on managerial evaluations of grievances.

Studied the influence of appellant's sex and type of appeal on managers' evaluations of grievances in a simulation administered to 73 male and 28 female bank managers. 2 grievances, each written in 4 forms so as to manipulate appellant's sex and type of appeal, were embedded in an in-basket simulation. When the appellant was male, a polite, pleading appeal was very favorably received, and an aggressive, threatening appeal was fairly well received. When the appellant was female, an aggressive, threatening appeal was quite favorably received, but a polite, pleading appeal was much less well received. It appears that women who employ a deferent approach may be victimized by their own sex role stereotypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Validity concerns and usefulness of student ratings of instruction.

The validity of student rating measures of instructional quality was severely questioned in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, however, most expert opinion viewed student rating measures as valid and as worthy of widespread use. In retrospect, older discriminant-validity concerns were not so much resolved as they were displaced from research attention by accumulating evidence for convergent validity. This article introduces a Current Issues section that gives new attention to validity concerns associated with student ratings. The section's 4 articles deal, respectively, with (a) conceptual structure (are student ratings unidimensional or multidimensional?), (b) convergent validity (how well do ratings correlate with other indicators of effective teaching?), (c) discriminant validity (are ratings influenced by factors other than teaching effectiveness?), and (d) consequential validity (are ratings used effectively in personnel development and evaluation?). Although all 4 articles favor the use of ratings, they disagree on controversial points associated with interpretation and use of ratings data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perspectives on child behavior problems: Comparisons of children's self-reports with parent and teacher reports.

Associations among parents', teachers', and children's self-reports of internalizing and externalizing child behavior problems were examined in two studies. In the first, both teachers' and parents' reports were modestly and independently associated with children's self-reported behavior problems. In the second, mothers' and fathers' reports of their children's behavior problems were moderately associated with parents' self-reports of their own psychological symptoms as well as with their children's self-reports of their behavior problems. Implications of these studies for the use of multiple perspectives in the assessment of children's behavior problems are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and outcome of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea

OBJECTIVE: Clostridium difficile gastrointestinal disease is an important nosocomial infection and is associated with recent antibiotic use. This study evaluated C. difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) over a 2-yr period. METHODS: All 60 patients with C. difficile enterotoxin in their stools, and diarrhea, were retrospectively analyzed at a 615-bed teaching hospital. Institution antibiotic usage and discharge medical diagnoses were correlated with the study patients. RESULTS: Thirty-eight study patients (53%) had major or extreme admitting symptoms. Only four (7%) had no co-morbid illness. The incidence of CDAD increased significantly (p < 0.05) after 4 wk of hospitalization. No demographic or temporal clustering was discovered. Leukocytosis (60%), leftward polymorphonuclear shift (47%), dehydration (30%), weight loss (23%), and oliguria (12%) were the major clinical findings. Among these subject 51 (85%) had been on ceftriaxone and/or ceftazidime in the preceding 6 wk; ceftriaxone/ceftazidime was highly significantly associated (p < 0.01) with more cases than expected by usage alone. No patient on ticarcillin/clavulanate developed CDAD, although it was the most commonly used antibiotic (p < 0.00001). Higher mortality was associated with older debilitated nursing home residents. CONCLUSIONS: Third-generation cephalosporin use correlated with the development of CDAD; ticarcillin/clavulanate usage did not. Morbidity and mortality associated with CDAD is significant, is worse in debilitated older nursing home patients, and is more likely to occur in hospitalizations lasting longer than 4 wk.     

Acculturation, Familism, Parental Monitoring, and Knowledge as Predictors of Marijuana and Inhalant Use in Adolescents.

The authors investigated relationships between marijuana and inhalant use and several cultural and demographic factors in Anglo American and Hispanic American adolescents (N=1,094). Outcome measures assessed lifetime and 30-day marijuana and inhalant use. Predictors and covariates used in logistic regression analyses were region, grade, gender, knowledge, acculturation, familism, and parental monitoring. Hispanic Americans exhibited higher usage across all measures. In this group, high acculturation was associated with low marijuana, but high inhalant, use. Across all participants, positive family relations and parental monitoring were strongly associated with attenuated marijuana use hut only among those most knowledgeable about drugs. Familism and monitoring were not associated with diminished usage among the less knowledgeable. For inhalants, monitoring combined with high knowledge or high familism was associated with diminished usage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' occupational well-being and quality of instruction: The important role of self-regulatory patterns.

Teachers' occupational well-being (level of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction) and quality of instruction are two key aspects of research on teaching that have rarely been studied together. The role of occupational engagement and resilience as two important work-related self-regulatory dimensions that predict occupational well-being and teachers' instructional performance in the classroom was investigated. In Part 1 of the study, self-regulatory data from 1,789 German mathematics teachers were subjected to a latent profile analysis, yielding four self-regulatory types (healthy-ambitious, unambitious, excessively ambitious, and resigned) that differed significantly on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. In Part 2, the association between teachers' self-regulatory type and instructional performance was examined in a subsample of 318 teachers. Results showed that teachers' self-regulatory type predicted the quality of instruction in three of the four aspects of instructional performance examined. Moreover, teachers' self-regulatory type was systematically linked to differences in students' motivation. No association was found between teacher self-regulation and student achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonverbal disclosure of teacher deception and interpersonal affect.

Explored the effect of verbal dissembling on nonverbal behavior. Stimulus teachers were 32 female undergraduates who were led to be verbally truthful or deceptive to a student confederate. The teachers' underlying affective state and the publicness of the interaction between teacher and student were also varied experimentally. Videotaped samples of teachers' nonverbal behavior were shown to 37 naive judges (female undergraduates) who rated how pleased the teachers appeared. Results show that nonverbal behavior tends to reflect whether a teacher is dissembling or truthful. In addition, when being truthful, teachers revealed their underlying affective states; but when lying, there was no difference in nonverbal behavior according to affective state. Teachers' nonverbal behavior also tended to occur differentially according to the publicness of the interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of teachers' pedagogical content beliefs matters for students' achievement gains: Quasi-experimental evidence from elementary mathematics.

In a longitudinal study of 496 students in 27 self-contained German elementary school classrooms, performance in mathematical word problems and arithmetic tasks was measured at the end of Grades 2 and 3. A questionnaire was used to assess the degree to which teachers' pedagogical content beliefs in elementary mathematics reflect a cognitive constructivist orientation, rather than an associationist or direct-transmission view of learning and teaching. Our findings show that a cognitive constructivist orientation was associated with larger achievement gains in mathematical word problems. Moreover, teachers with a direct transmission view were not more successful than teachers with a cognitive constructivist orientation in fostering students' computational proficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)