Search

Profiles of 104 welfare recipients in Georgia were examined to identify social indicators and cognitive variables that influenced work role participation. Three instruments were administered the Career Thought Inventory, the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form, and the demographic profile and participation scale of the Salience Inventory to determine how well race, education, dysfunctional career thoughts, and career decision-making self-efficacy predicted work role participation. It was found that, as a group, the welfare recipients in the sample defied stereotypes; they were older, better educated, and more heterogeneous than is typically reported. Among other findings were the following: (1) a majority of participants indicated at least some difficulty with dysfunctional career thoughts; (2) career decision-making self-efficacy was lower than that of a normative sample of college females; (3) black respondents spent more time in work activities than their white counterparts; (4) non-high school completers indicated more decision-making confusion and commitment anxiety, but less career decision-making self-efficacy than high school completers. It was concluded that career self-efficacy was the most important predictor of work role participation. It was suggested that service providers do the following: (1) incorporate coping mechanisms that recipients could employ to minimize obstacles to self-efficacy into employment intervention programs; and (2) employ awareness and sensitivity to the clash between the future-oriented nature of career/job training and day-to-day survival needs confronting welfare recipients.(There are three tables. The bibliography lists 51 references.)(AJ)

This study examined the impact of mid-semester student ratings feedback on a faculty's end-of-semester student ratings. The positive direction of the end-of-semester ratings in the two mid-semester feedback groups lent support to the premise that cognitive dissonance theory and various forms of mid-semester, student rating feedback can be used to improve teaching. Of the 158 faculty members invited to participate, 61 volunteered. In the control group, faculty members were rated by students at the end of the semester. In the first treatment group (feedback group), members rated themselves at mid-semester and also received student ratings at mid-semester. The other treatment group (consultation group), faculty members rated themselves and were rated by students as above, but they also received a group consultation (workshop) with their feedback. The means (except for involving students) were greater for the workshop group than for the feedback group, and the means for the feedback group were greater than for the control group. (Contains 2 tables and 18 references.) (SLD)

Close analysis of both the explicit and implicit curriculum is necessary to truly understand the kind of work relationships educators develop with their students and what values, epistemologies, and belief systems they are going to appreciate as a result of the collective educational experience. The analysis began with student voices and experiences as the researchers tried to peel away the multiple layers of their teaching and learning--several high school students were contacted and asked if they would be willing to talk about their experiences with the writing curricula in their respective schools. Focus group sessions were conducted with two different groups (n=7), and the conversations were organized around their writing experiences in and out of high school, specifically on the writing curricula. The conversations with the students are described and analyzed. First, the paper contextualizes the students' school experience and provides a review of their reactions to this highly structured, highly regulated writing environment along with their suggestions for how to improve their writing experiences. The paper then chronicles the cognitive dissonance these students are subjected to as a result of conflicting personal and institutional conceptions of writing and suggests that their experiences argue convincingly for a more postmodern, aesthetic writing curriculum. The possible consequences of not reconceptualizing the high school writing curriculum are explored. Contains 17 references. (NKA)

Patterns of history and culture help define the path one finds acceptable and follows. In Tremont, Maine, out-migration coupled with the influx of summer visitors has helped create a culture that undercuts students' appreciation of their own abilities and diminishes their aspirations to postsecondary education. Maine students in the "high risk group" may experience cognitive dissonance if they seek higher education and succumb to the cultural pressure not to continue. However, educators can use the strengths of rural culture, the family, and community as levers of change to encourage students to pursue higher education and return to build the local economy and revitalize their communities. A community center could address many of the constraints on young people's aspirations by offering mentoring from community members, entrepreneurial education, job counseling and internships, parenting education and day care, and adult education programs that are also open to high school students. Sharing of local school facilities with the community would make these facilities more economical and bring together people of different ages. (Contains 37 references.) (Author/TD)

The effective use of technology in the mathematics classroom depends on the interaction between students and their peers, students and teacher, and students and technology. This report describes a study of the introduction of a cognitive teaching model for using graphing calculators in a secondary mathematics classroom in Hong Kong. Episodes of the lessons on asymptotes are used to illustrate how teaching techniques can be used to change cognitive conflicts into situations supporting student construction of knowledge. (WRM)

The multicultural perceptions and attitudinal shifts, if any, during student teaching of selected social studies student teachers at Mississippi State University were studied through a case study methodology that used observations, interviews, and document analyses, including scores on the Mississippi Teacher Assessment Instrument. The three student teachers from a class with the lowest scores on the Multicultural Perceptions Inventory and the three with the highest scores were selected. Perceptions and attitudes were assessed throughout the semester for these students and seven supervising teachers. Five of the six student teachers did not demonstrate the knowledge and skills deemed necessary according to the literature to provide the opportunity for the successful academic performance of culturally diverse students. Four of the six had positive attitudes toward culturally diverse students, but only one had the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to be successful in teaching culturally diverse students. Only one of the supervising teachers scored high enough on the teacher assessment instrument to indicate an attitude favoring student strategies that are student-centered, individualized, and flexible. Most of the student teachers in this sample did not experience cognitive dissonance with culturally diverse students in the classroom and did not change their attitudes as a result. Student teachers need opportunities to experience student-centered teaching strategies as well as teacher-centered strategies. (Contains 23 references.) (SLD)

The devaluation of racial, ethnic, or religious groups, sometimes disguised as humor, is a major contributor to violence and aggression against these groups. In an effort to understand this process, five factors of humor: negative ethnic stereotype jokes, play-on-word jokes, academic/social referent cartoons, gender/establishment jokes, and gross cartoons, are examined in this paper. Responses to a broad sampling of jokes and cartoons were obtained so as to identify these factors. The factors were related to humor theories and to the roles of emotional sensitivity and cognitive abilities as part of a program of research to determine who will find different humor materials amusing and to discover what contexts affect the humorousness of jokes and cartoons. It is hypothesized that responses to specific types of humor may provide a window to negative beliefs and feelings about ethnic groups. It was found that emotional empathy was negatively correlated only with the humorousness of negative ethnic stereotype jokes. Added laughter amplified this negative correlation. Cognitive dissonance theory instruction reduced humor ratings on negative stereotype jokes but not other humor factors. It is concluded that the presence of ethnic jokes indicates a need for increased emotional empathy and greater bicultural competence. (RJM)

Effective education requires a balance between cognitive dissonance and emotional safety. This relationship is particularly important in the social studies, where the broad goal of societal improvement necessitates the contemplation of sensitive social and personal issues. Nonetheless, a recent investigation of the elementary social studies in the state of Delaware demonstrates that dissonance and safety are often imbalanced or isolated in classroom practice. For many teachers, these goals are viewed as mutually exclusive. Emotional safety is given greater priority, and the dissonance that does occur is often unintentional, offered without adequate support, or unidirectionally applied to some situations but not others. This paper examines existing imbalances between cognitive dissonance and emotional safety in the elementary classroom and considers the kinds of relationships necessary to promote social development for the greater good within a pluralistic society. An affectively safe classroom environment can and should serve as a necessary backdrop for addressing difficult, often controversial social issues even in the earliest of grades. (Author/JAG)

Based on the tenets of Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, five preconditions for dissonance arousal were operationalized in a counterattitudinal essay writing task. The five preconditions were: perceived choice, irrevocable commitment, minimum incentive, perceived responsibility for consequences, and foreseeability of negative consequences of behavior. The sample was 141 middle school students enrolled in grades 6, 7, and 8. Subjects were asked to write essays on the theme "Why I like learning science," with the expectation that the essays would be publicly displayed and read by their peers. It was predicted that dissonance arousal following the essay writing task would be reduced by a positive attitude change in the direction of the counterattitudinal advocacy. The effect of grade level, gender, and three treatment levels on attitude change were assessed. A significant three-way interaction of grade level, gender, and treatment level on science attitude scores was found. (Author/AA)

Children rarely cite more than one strategy when asked to explain how they solved a particular arithmetic problem, hence their verbal explanations will not necessarily reveal whether they have considered multiple strategies on that problem. However, previous work has shown that, when asked to explain their performance on a task, children often use gestures along with their spoken explanations, and these gestures convey substantive information about the completion of that task which is different from the verbal information. While solving a primary, arithmetic task as part of this study, discordant children (n=7) who produced explanations with different strategies in gesture and speech, and concordant children (n=10) who produced explanations with a single strategy were both given a secondary task, or cognitive load. Discordant and concordant children alike produced the same number of correct responses on the primary task. However, as predicted, the discordant children expended more effort on the primary task due to the activation of two strategies, thereby reducing their capacity to perform on the secondary task in comparison with the concordant children. Discussion focuses on the suggestion that the transitional knowledge state with respect to conceptual attainment in the young learner appears to be characterized by multiple representations which are simultaneously held in the same mental space and are activated when the learner attempts to actively engage in problem solving. (JJK)

This study compared the effects of cooperative learning groups to traditional instruction in remediating students' misconceptions about temperature. Students from grades 3, 4, and 5 in two rural elementary schools participated in the study. Students completed a pretest, a cognitive conflict laboratory activity and a posttest that measured qualitative and quantitative aspects of their understanding of temperature. The control group completed the activity in traditional dyads and the experimental group completed the activity in cooperative learning groups composed of four students. The experimental group was given laboratory worksheets that asked the group to first solve a qualitative problem and the quantitative problems that referred to the same type of measurement to create cognitive conflict between the two representational systems related to temperature. Students were asked to compare their answers on the two problems. If their answers conflicted, they were told to decide which answer was correct and to carry out an experiment to prove their answer. No directions were given for control group students on the predictions or results, but they were asked to answer the questions on the laboratory activity sheet together. The results indicated that the conflict training was effective in changing students' concepts of temperature, but the cooperative learning groups were no more effective than the traditional dyads. (YP)

The process of diagnosing mental disorders and the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have been increasingly important for counselors. This article provides information on the hallmarks of this shift. Reviews and discusses the changes form the third and fourth editions of the DSM. Offers predictions as to future trends in the diagnosis of mental disorders. (Author/MKA)

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of reasoning of a convenience sample of all seventh through twelfth grade students (N=156) in a consolidated school district in rural Arkansas prior to the introduction of a thinking program in which logical thinking is one component. Four research questions were investigated: (1) What percentage of seventh through twelfth grade students are formal operational thinkers as measured by the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT)? (2) Are there significant differences in the level of thinking as measured on the GALT among seventh through twelfth grade students? (3) Are there gender differences in logical lthinking ability of seventh through twelfth grade students as measured by the GALT? and (4) What are the underlying differences among seventh through twelfth grade students classified as formal, transitional, or concrete operational? The 12-item abbreviated form of GALT was selected to measure the reasoning level of the sample. Eleven percent of the sample measured formal operational on the GALT. Significant results in favor of the tenth grade group were found. Significant values were found in favor of the males on the conservation mode, conservation of volume, and probabilistic reasoning and in favor of the females on combinatorial logic. (CW)

Discusses white American ethnic consciousness in the community college classroom. Describes the Racial/Cultural Identity Development model's five stages of white identity development, through which individuals proceed from stages of cultural unawareness to enlightenment: conformity, dissonance, resistance, introspection, and integrative awareness. Includes 18 citations.(JDI)

It is argued that the reduction of cognitive dissonance can be viewed as a constraint satisfaction problem, and a computational model of the process of consonance seeking is proposed. Simulations from this model matched psychological findings from the insufficient justification and free-choice paradigms of cognitive dissonance theory. (SLD)

Examines the inherent dichotomy between the competing needs of maintaining emotional safety and exploring sensitive issues in social studies classrooms. Argues that an effectively safe classroom can serve as a necessary backdrop for addressing controversial issues even in the earliest of grades. Maintains that most teachers simply ignore these issues. (MJP)

Describes the design, delivery, and impact of an undergraduate early childhood education course consistent with constructivist principles. Cites results from the Teachers' Belief Questionnaire and examination of student journals indicating students' knowledge and beliefs about teaching had changed. Suggests that helping students recognize preconceptions about teaching and challenging those ideas through cognitive conflict by reflection and problem solving facilitated learning. (KDFB)

Contrasts the consistency, the self-concept, and the new look formulations of cognitive dissonance. The study demonstrates that dissonance occurs when a behavior and its consequences contradict an individual's self-concept. Findings both support and diverge from various aspects of the three formulations of dissonance phenomena. (LSR)