This study explored what instructors can do to improve student depth of thinking in online discussion boards (DBs). Participants were graduate students enrolled in online courses within a college of education in the southwest United States. Measurement consisted of discourse analysis of posts in DBs and student self-assessment of dispositions,…

The remarkable contributors to this special issue highlight the importance of developmental research on emotion and its regulation, as well as its conceptual and methodological challenges. This commentary offers some additional thoughts, especially concerning alternative views of the convergence of multiple measures of emotional responding, the…

National survey of college mass communication students (N = 247) analyzed attitudes on the teaching of print and electronic media skills, using journalism students as comparison group. Previous research had not explored strategic communication student responses to convergence. Found identity variables within public relations (PR) field related to…

Applying Weick's (1995) sensemaking theory to analyze technology sensemaking by university administrators and faculty and staff, this study found that there is both unity and divergence in their sensemaking about an information technology. Administrators attempted to discursively construct a pro-technology organizational culture, which gained…

Discussions on academic advising theory have centered on application from many disciplines; however, academic advising is unlike any other field, and therefore, theories from other disciplines do not correspond with all of the unique goals of advising: assisting students in understanding the meaning of higher education, supporting students in…

For decades, debates have raged about performance management in education. While it is essential to understand the degree of student learning and the nature of teacher impact in education systems, when attempts at managing outcomes go wrong, the consequences can be problematic. National Education Organization (a pseudonym for the organization…

The purpose of this dissertation is to study students' competencies in generating scientific explanations within the domain of complex systems, an interdisciplinary area in which students tend to have difficulties. While considering students' developing explanations of how complex systems work, I investigate the role of prior knowledge…

This paper addresses the power of intonation to convey interpersonal or attitudinal meaning. Speakers have been shown to accommodate to each other in the course of conversation, and this convergence may be perceived as a sign of empathy. Accommodation often involves paradigmatic choices--choosing the same words, gestures, regional accent or…

On December 11, 2014, "New America" convened a group of leading experts on dual language learners (DLLs) to launch its new Dual Language Learners National Work Group. The group aimed to address three questions: (1) What are the key best practices for dual language learner instruction, policy, and research?; (2) What are the areas of…

Intelligence and creativity are accounted for in terms of two different mental operations referred to as "convergent thinking" and "divergent thinking", respectively. Nevertheless, psychometric evidence on the relationship between intelligence and creativity has been controversial. To clarify their relationship, we…

State education agencies and school districts are increasingly using measures based on student test-score growth in their systems for evaluating school and teacher performance. In many cases, these systems inform high-stakes decisions such as which schools to close and which teachers to retain. Performance metrics tied directly to student…

A new proof for the monotonicity of the sequence [image omitted] is given as a special case of a large family of monotomic and bounded, hence convergent sequences. The new proof is based on basic calculus results rather than induction, which makes it accessible to a larger audience including business and life sciences students and faculty. The…

The Remote Associates Test (RAT) developed by Mednick and Mednick (1967) is known as a valid measure of creative convergent thinking. We developed a 30-item version of the RAT in Dutch with high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85) and applied both Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory (IRT) to provide measures of item…

This paper investigates design collaboration with reference to convergent and divergent idea generation processes in architectural design teams entering a design competition. Study of design teams offer a unique opportunity to investigate how creativity is fostered through collaborative work. While views of creativity often relate creativity to…

This article describes a hybrid standard setting method that combines characteristics of the Angoff (1971) and Bookmark (Mitzel, Lewis, Patz & Green, 2001) methods. The proposed approach utilizes strengths of each method while addressing weaknesses. An ordered item booklet, with items sorted based on item difficulty, is used in combination…