Seductive details are interesting, but sometimes irrelevant to the target material present in texts and lectures. In the current study, 388 undergraduate students read six paragraphs describing Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages (i.e., target material). Participants in four groups also read one of two biographical paragraphs. The biographical…

Studied the primacy effect (tendency to select items closer to the left side of the response scale) in Likert scales worded from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree" and in the opposite direction. Findings for 386 high school and college students show no primacy effect, although negatively worded stems had an effect on Cronbach's alpha. (SLD)

Attempted to link preservice teachers (college students) from educational institutions in Texas and Florida for exchanging ideas and activities in the classroom environment. Results for 18 preservice teachers suggest that this e-mail peer coaching made preservice teachers more aware of the challenges facing education professionals and resulted in…

Studied the predominant study skills and weaknesses of college students in a sample of 366 undergraduates. Study skill weaknesses were identified in the areas of note-taking, reading skills, and time management. Study skills were also related to age, grade point average, and the number of hours spent studying each week. (SLD)

Studied whether cooperative editing would significantly decrease the mean number of major (nonstandard) grammar errors on papers written by college freshmen in remedial composition courses. Four classes (79 students) were divided into control and treatment groups, with the treatment groups using researcher-developed cooperative editing exercises.…

This journal publishes articles that focus on the results of applied educational research, scholarly reviews of research, descriptions of classroom techniques, studies of assessments, and other topics of interest to educational researchers. Issue number 1 of Volume 6 contains these articles: (1) "'More than Having a Vision': The Emergence of…

Teaching Enhancements Affecting Minority Students (TEAMS) is a program designed to increase retention of minority college students. A survey of minority students (75 TEAMS and 374 nonTEAMS) at a campus where TEAMS had been implemented found TEAMS members more aware of student services than nonmembers. TEAMS students also had more positive…

A college administered the computer-adaptive ACCUPLACER (College Board, 1995) reading placement test to 399 entering students and its paper-and-pencil version, COMPANION, to 481 students. When the age of the two groups was held constant, no differences were found between the groups. (SLD)

Three proposed models were tested to explore the inter-relationships affecting student academic performance and nonacademic factors using structural equation modeling. Results with 147 undergraduates suggest that a Bio-Model and a Family Mediated Model serve to predict academic performance moderately well. (SLD)

Undergraduate psychology examinations from 48 schools were analyzed to determine the proportion of items at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy, item format, and test length. Analyses indicated significant relationships between item complexity and test length even when taking format into account. Use of higher items may be related to shorter tests,…

Eighty college students taught to perform in NewAbacus, a new number system, were asked to rate the degree to which they believed their problem solutions were accurate. Results indicate that students believed in their errors more than was realistically warranted. The question of student overconfidence is explored. (SLD)

The influences of elementary school context were studied with 88 preservice teachers student teaching in 2 different university field programs. Data support the benefits of pluralistic school experiences for future teachers and suggest that contextual conditions unique to a particular school may influence preservice teachers' learning and…

A qualitative inquiry describes the sociocultural aspects of an urban elementary school serving as the context for a reading/language arts early field experience and examines how the sociocultural factors of this school contribute to the professional development of the preservice teachers who work there and their three supervising teachers. (SLD)

The relationship of students' study skills to their locus of control, social interdependence, academic preparation, age, and study time was studied with 266 college students. Study skills were related to locus of control, age, expected course grade, and study time. The need to address attitudinal and motivational variables in study skills programs…

Sixty-three preservice teachers were asked to respond to the idea of cheating while administering a standardized test to their students. Over half said they would cheat under certain conditions, such as benefit to the students or if the test was inappropriate. Cheating considered acceptable included giving hints, rewording items, and teaching to…