Professional associations' strategies for revitalizing professional psychology.

The professional associations of psychologists are working to revitalize professional psychology. In response to recent challenges, these associations have attempted to (a) remove barriers to quality services within the mental care health delivery system; (b) help psychologists become better integrated within the overall health care system, as opposed to being narrowly defined as mental health professionals; and (c) help more psychologists move into services outside of the health care delivery system. These 3 strategies are motivated by a vision of psychology as a broad problem-solving discipline that can contribute to human welfare in a varied range of domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revitalizing the measurement curriculum: Four approaches for emphasis in graduate education.

Several recent publications have noted the lack of emphasis placed on psychological measurement in graduate training. The resulting knowledge and skill deficit hinders psychology's advancement as a science and is evident by poor measurement-reporting practices found in psychology journals. Given recent progress in theory and methods, the lack of attention to measurement issues is all the more surprising. Four approaches are reviewed (classical, psychometric-statistical, cognitive, and computer-based) that offer potentially important applications across a wide range of research and practice areas. Although students still require graduate coursework in basic principles and methods, developments in these 4 areas suggest a need for revision and potential expansion of the measurement curriculum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the future of personality measurement.

Examines a number of closely related issues in personality theory and assessment that have troubled the history of personality measurement and must be dealt with in its future. These issues include the multiple determinism of behavior, the role of context, the multiple goals of personality measurement, the "subject" as potential expert and colleague, the analysis of environments, and the role of person variables. Finally, some close parallels developing between personality psychology and cognitive psychology and the emergence in psychology of a new image of the human being are considered. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the meaning and measurement of goal commitment.

Recent research by Tubbs and Dahl (1991) and Tubbs (1993) has proposed that discrepancy measures of goal commitment are superior to self-report measures. We explore the theoretical, practical, and empirical problems with discrepancy measures of goal commitment. We reanalyzed some of the relationships discussed by these authors using their data and demonstrate that the failure to control for ability leads to incorrect conclusions regarding the relative usefulness of discrepancy versus self-report measures. In addition, we conducted a separate study to further compare the usefulness of these different measures. Finally, we discuss the meaning of goal commitment and the role of goals in the motivational process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

试论我国高校课程改革及发展趋势

建国以来,我国曾进行了三次大的课程改革.建国初期,随着对教育事业的改造和向前苏联学习,进行了第一次课程改革,其主要内容与目标是确立社会主义的课程理论和实践体系,废除了不少旧课程,充实了新课程,编定了全国统一的教学计划、教学大纲和教科书,便学校课程纳入了社会主义轨道,因而形成了全国"大统一"的课程模式,把培养"现成的专家"作为高等学校本科教育的目标.第二次课程改革,是1958年进行的,其主要目的是精简课程,强调课程直接与生产劳动相结合,更好地为政治服务,增加了劳动课时,但学生的科学文化素质有所下降.党的十一届三中全会之后,进行了第三次较大的课程改革,其主要目标和内容是课程的现代化、综合化和多样化,建立以现代化建设为中心的社会主义课程改革模式,培养面向21世纪的人才.     

Psychological testing in the undergraduate curriculum.

Surveyed the emphasis given to courses in statistics, methods and psychological testing in 51 Canadian undergraduate psychology programs. The survey form consisted of two major questions about courses in statistics, method and testing: (1) Is there a course offering? And (2) Is the course offering required for the major and honours degrees. Results show that courses in psychological testing are offered less often and are required much less often than those in statistics and methods. This may reflect a lack of attention to testing in graduate school training and a preference for "experimental" over "correlational" psychology. It is argued that testing courses should be required because measurement is a fundamental topic, that certain important debates rest on test data, and that tests are widely used in applied settings. Some suggestions are presented for course content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

试论课改中校长领导方式的转变

教学课程改革是全球性趋势.我国当前所进行的课程改革的目的是谋求课程基础性、多样性和选择性的统一,促进全体学生的和谐发展.课程改革不仅是教科书的改变,而是教育理念、学校管理与制度、教师专业发展、教学体系、学校资源利用与开发,学校文化建设的整体变革.实现上述变革,校长的管理思想与领导方式的变革是关键.人民教育家陶行知先生说过:"做一个校长谈何容易!说得小一些,他关系千百人的学业前途;说得大一些,他关系国家与学校的兴衰."     

Toward a future-oriented curriculum.

Describes a laboratory course in psychology that allows students to develop anticipatory skills and/or contingency plans for future events. The students define a research problem, generate hypotheses, design experiments, and observe outcomes with the help of computer programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a reorganization of the psychology curriculum.

Describes the undergraduate psychology program at the University of Dallas with reference to the questions that R. B. MacLeod (see record 1971-31625-001) asked teachers of psychology, i.e., what is your purpose, what kind of psychology are you teaching, to whom are you teaching, and how are you preparing yourselves? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Baccalaureate curriculum. Gerontological nursing objectives

1. Gerontological preparation for nursing practice is no longer a curricular luxury; it is a necessity. Baccalaureate nursing education must include broad content and guided practice in gerontological nursing. 2. Incorporating gerontology into a baccalaureate nursing curriculum often is a challenge. Reasons include gerontology not being a "traditional" specialty area; health care professionals in the United States, including nurses, not viewing older adults differently from younger adults; students not being expected to apply knowledge or concepts specifically related to gerontology; and efforts to incorporate gerontological content into a curriculum being resisted due to ageism--a "natural" avoidance of aging from which nursing faculty are not exempt. 3. Because of the limited numbers of nurses with an advanced education in gerontology, the recruitment of experienced, knowledgeable faculty is difficult. Most gerontology faculty are still largely self-taught and enter nursing education via the fields of medical/surgical, psychiatric, or community nursing. It is largely these faculty who must plan and "pioneer" gerontology in the curriculum.     

A curriculum for the teaching of behavior assessment.

Describes a curriculum for the teaching of behavior assessment to graduate students of clinical psychology in which an attempt was made to integrate, within the single-S research strategy, both experimental psychopathology and the observational methods employed in behavior modification. Various psychological assessment issues are discussed in the context of the organization of the required readings for the course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the measurement of achievement goals: Critique, illustration, and application.

The authors identified several specific problems with the measurement of achievement goals in the current literature and illustrated these problems, focusing primarily on A. J. Elliot and H. A. McGregor's (2001) Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ). They attended to these problems by creating the AGQ-Revised and conducting a study that examined the measure's structural validity and predictive utility with 229 (76 male, 150 female, 3 unspecified) undergraduates. The hypothesized factor and dimensional structures of the measure were confirmed and shown to be superior to a host of alternatives. The predictions were nearly uniformly supported with regard to both the antecedents (need for achievement and fear of failure) and consequences (intrinsic motivation and exam performance) of the 4 achievement goals. In discussing their work, the authors highlight the importance and value of additional precision in the area of achievement goal measurement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sun and water: On a modulus-based measurement of happiness.

Most happiness researchers use semantic differential or Likert scales to assess happiness. Such conventionally used scales are susceptible to scale renorming (interpretation of scales differently in different contexts) and can produce a specious relativism effect (e.g., rating a low-income person happier than a high-income person in situations where the low-income person is not happier). Building on related psychophysical measurements, the authors propose a simple, survey-friendly, modulus-based scale of happiness and show that it is less susceptible to specious relativism than conventional rating scales but can still catch genuine relativism (e.g., rating a low-income person to be happier than a high-income person in situations where the low-income person is indeed happier). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Medical-naturopathy curriculum in education. Introduction and organization of the medical-naturopathy curriculum from the Middle Ages into the 19th century

A source-oriented research study that began with medieval library catalogs, provided the material needed to establish the organization and structuring of the teaching of natural science in monastic/convent schools. The further development of natural science from here to present-day teaching of biology was then traced. The wealth of material available since the late Middle Ages enabled the individual phases of development of this new teaching subject to be identified and their adoption into the Latin education system determined. This process revealed a series of different establishment phases. From the Middle Ages onwards, the study is based on teachers' and pupils' books known to have been used in the Latin education system, and, from the 18th Century onward, on an additional 7,000 or so school annual reports as well as, from the second part of the 19th Century, teaching curricula.     

Similarities and differences in U.S. nurse anesthesia curriculum and Mexican military nurses in anesthesiology curriculum

The development of psychogerontology in Germany is described. First important publications in the 1950s and basic empirical investigations in the 1960s and 1970s were followed by the foundation of psychogerontological educational programs at the Universities of Kassel, Osnabrück-Vechta, Erlangen-Nuremberg and Heidelberg. With the foundation of the Deutsches Zentrum für Alternsforschung DZFA in 1996, German psychogerontology is now supported in a substantial way. In psychogeronotological research the Max-Planck-Institutions in Berlin and Munich play an influential role. Some major psychogerontological research projects and future developments in research are mentioned. Fundamental characteristics of the psychogerontological educational programs at the Universities of Kassel, Osnabrück, Erlangen-Nuremberg and Heidelberg are presented finally.     

Development of a practice-oriented curriculum. 9. Arthrology

The background problem this article addresses is the need to reduce the quantity of medical information to a standard core of knowledge relative to the overwhelming amount of scientific information to be learned in the limited amount of time students have available. The article is part of a study the aim of which is to define a core students, independent of their further medical specialization. The design of this study is a survey of a representative sample of Swiss general practitioners who were asked to identify in the list of Nomina Anatomica the most prevalent anatomical entities (terms) occurring in their practice. To assure the representativeness of the sample the identified terms were compared to prevalent diagnoses of all Swiss general practitioners and to the incidence of cases in German hospitals. From the list of International Anatomical Nomenclature (IANC) 280 anatomical terms could be identified with respect to arthrology. Of these, 250 were judged uniformly by the physicians: 52 terms were considered relevant, while it was not though necessary for 198 terms to be relevant, while it is was not thought necessary for 198 terms to be learned, i.e. general practitioners agreed on 89.3% of the terms. Only 29.7% of the terms in the IANC list belong to anatomical core knowledge in arthrology. There is evidence for the representativeness of these findings when compared to the prevalence of diagnoses made by general practitioners and to the incidence of cases in German hospitals. The method of using criteria of prevalence in a survey to identify a core of knowledge in medicine is suited for the definition of learning content necessary for professional purposes.     

Evaluating curriculum fit with class ability.

To evaluate curriculum fit with class ability, the magnitude of individual differences in size and number of instructional subunits read were examined, as well as number of repetitions (days) of a unit required to achieve a criterion level of performance. Two groups of 5th graders—a high IQ group (40 Ss) and an average IQ group (28 Ss)—read units of social science material from textbooks used in their own schools and in the other group's school. Empirical ratios (for the time to achieve criterion level and for the number of subunits to criterion level) of 3:1 and 5:1 were obtained for the average IQ group and the high IQ group, respectively, on their own curricula. The time to criterion and the number of subunits mastered in 8 days were correlated with IQ and reading achievement for both groups. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)