Reviewing, Rethinking and Revising Homework Expectations in a Seventh Grade Math Class

In this action research study of my seventh grade mathematics class, I investigated whether de-emphasizing homework assignments as daily grades while stressing them as daily practice encouraged students to focus more on the learning rather than the daily grade. As part of this study, I also looked at how this change in homework expectations affected my daily teaching. I discovered that having students keep notes, examples, practice problems and homework assignments in a notebook helped them concentrate more on the process of getting answers and why they may of had an incorrect answer. Students were more likely to discuss with their peers how answers were found when comparing answers showed differences. When we reviewed the answers, they were more willing to ask questions about why their answer was wrong and then make corrections. As a result of this research, I plan to continue having seventh graders keep using notebooks to organize their notes, examples and assignments.

Adolescents’ Occupational and Educational Aspirations and Expectations: Links to High School Activities and Adult Educational Attainment

This longitudinal study explored adolescents’ future-oriented cognitions, current activities, and later educational attainment using data from 317 adolescents (55% female; mean age = 14.98 years, SD = 0.85) followed into early adulthood. Aspirations and expectations regarding work and education showed modest stability from year to year. Exploration of the reciprocal relations between these cognitions and adolescents’ activities supported both unidirectional and bidirectional effects, with different patterns emerging for aspirations and expectations. In multiple regression analyses, future-oriented cognitions predicted adult educational attainment; follow- up analyses indicated that the effect of adolescents’ expectations was partially mediated by participation in extracurricular activities. These results suggest a potentially important influence of adolescents’ future-oriented cognitions on their current behavior and future attainments.

The Myth of the Rational Market: Nudging Each Other Away from Fool’s Gold

A flurry of media commentary and several new books are focused on the recent financial crisis and near economic collapse. A Newsweek article by Zakaria (2009), “Greed is Good (To a Point),” suggests reconsidering the role of greed in capitalism. This is also the theme in Fools Gold (Tett, 2009), a story about the way derivatives markets have evolved: showing greed at its worst. In many ways this is the core source of the current set of problems. In some sense, these perspectives are integrated in The Myth of the Rational Market by Fox (2009), who traces the thinking on the efficient market hypothesis, now understood for what it is: a myth. Both books are based in large part on interviews with major players in the crisis. There are also books drawing mainly on science, but still quite accessible to general readers, as represented in Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). Both have done extensive research on human foibles in economic choice. There is also Animal Spirits (Akerlof and Schiller, 2009), a book about what Keynesian economics is really about, a look at human forces at work. Akerlof is a Nobel prize winner in economics, who before this has pointed to the problems with presuming rationality in real markets. Schiller is one of the few economists who predicted these events.