The Open and Closed Mind

In recent years, knowledge of the biochemistry of oxygenated metabolites of arachidonic acid has greatly increased. Their biological functions in acceleration and prevention of platelet aggregation and in inflammatory and immune reactions are becoming much clearer. The therapeutic value, particularly of PGI2 as well as selective inhibitors of synthesis, is also rapidly advancing. Despite much effort, the functional importance of prostaglandins and thromboxanes in the cNS in normal ongoing physiological processes is still quite uncertain. However, when parenchymal or vascular elements are damaged or invaded by extraneural cells, the synthesis of one or the other member of the eicosanoids is greatly increased and contributes significantly to pathophysiological reactions. Thus, prevention of synthesis is likely to have increasing importance in clinical neurology, particularly in cerebrovascular diseases.

Eicosanoids: prostaglandins, thromboxanes, leukotrienes, and other derivatives of carbon-20 unsaturated fatty acids.

With a new approach and fortified by a wealth of experimental findings this book reverberates the hereditary-environment discussions of earlier decades. Little, if any, new data were obtained specifically for this research. Instead the author utilized available results from numerous longitudinal studies in a variety of disciplines. Testing the Overlap Hypothesis on these studies is the primary contribution of the book. The Overlap Hypothesis used here was formulated by J. E. Anderson who suggested that correlations between scores at two temporal points in longitudinal studies approximate the square root of the ratio obtained by dividing the mean of the first set of scores by the mean of the second. Hypothetical assumptions underlying this formulation are too involved to be included in a review; thus, it may suffice to say that this formula provides a method for comparing actual correlations with those expected on the basis of

Stability and Change in Human Characteristics.

(1975). Attitudes to Science : A Review. Studies in Science Education: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-41.

Attitudes to Science : A Review

This paper reports on the development stages of three attitudes to science and school scales for use with children aged from 5-11 years. The investigation is part of a project intended to improve pupil achievement in science in 16 schools in an English city. The base-line performance of the attitude scales with over 800 pupils is reported. Attitude sub-scales measure 'liking school', 'independent investigator', 'science enthusiasm', the 'social context' of science, and 'science as a difficult subject' with Cronbach Alpha reliabilities for the year groups varying from above 0.8 to below 0.7. For the sample, both boys' and girls' enthusiasm for science declines progressively with age alongside a similar decline in their perception that science is difficult.

Developing attitude to science scales for use with children of ages from five to eleven years

Ratings of students reveal an unfavourable image of physics and possible directions for improvement.

Changing Attitudes towards Science among Adolescents

A series of studies of high school physics classes throughout the nation (summarized in Walberg and Anderson, 1968) has shown that measures of student perception of classroom environment obtained at midyear predict gains in cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning criteria during the school year. With an improved environment instrument, the first of a second series on a new sample (Walberg, 1969d) showed that the canonical functions of the scales predict the same battery of learning criteria. Further, the study showed that the functions account for significant and substantial variance even after initial differences in achievement and interest in the subject and IQ are entered in stepwise regression equations. There is also evidence that environment scales moderate the relationships of instruction (Walberg, 1969a), IQ (Anderson, 1968), and personality (Bar-Yam, 1969) to learning criteria. Since personality and intelligence are fairly resistant to sharp changes, especially in older children (Bloom, 1964), replicated studies of such moderating effects would make it possible to 1) assign students of different characteristics to optimal learning environments and 2) change environments to make them optimal for most students (Walberg, 1969a). The feasibility of the second alternative was shown by an experiment by Anderson, Walberg, and Welch (1969) in which it was found that different course materials randomly assigned to classes produced significant differences in classroom environments. To seek hypotheses for further experimentation

Predictors of the Social Environment of Learning

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The Selection of a National Random Sample of Teachers for Experimental Curriculum Evaluation

Behavioral research workers often conceive of regression in the limited sense of the linear, additive model in which the independent variables have a straight-line relation to the dependent variable and do not interact. The variables are categorial variables and continuous variables. In stepwise regression, a series of regression models is tried, each model including a different set of variables. The Regression models are simple regression, multiple regression, and stepwise multiple regression. Many researchers are more familiar with the analysis of variance (ANOVA) approach, and because in many situations regression analysis offers some advantages over ANOVA. Generalized regression has at least three advantages over ANOVA: the use of continuous variables, less data processing time, and direct, comprehensive estimates of the magnitude and significance of the independent variable effects. Regression of ungrouped scores not only analyzes all the accountable variance, but saves the investigator the bothersome task of establishing suitable cutting points.

Generalized regression analysis

Objective empirical research on open schooling is sorely needed, but may encounter obstacles in the form of loose nomenclature. A recent study of the effects of open schooling (Wright, 1975) purports to show that students in open schools may achieve less and manifest more anxiety than their peers in traditional school settings. An adjacent article (Friedlander, 1975), which questions the appropriateness of measures Wright used, also questions the openness of the school setting used for Wright's study (which was "open" by virtue of few internal walls and family grouping of students). The point we wish to draw from the two articles is not that the particular school was or was not truly open, but that, because the term is used to describe such a variety of situations, openness is clearly not an adequate designation of any school or the program run within it. The investigation we report here is concerned, not with what open schooling ideally is or ought to be, but with what public school practitioners believe to be important for its practical implementation. The results may serve to alert researchers and commentators to popular views of open conditions and thereby prompt more attention to describing programs. Walberg and Thomas have undertaken several empirical investigations of what constitutes openness in terms of themes found in exhortations (Walberg & Thomas, 1971), in terms of teacher self-perceptions and in terms of observed instructional style of teachers (Walberg & Thomas, 1972). The aspects of open schooling that appear in these studies are for the most part matters of instructional style of the teachers-the teacher diagnoses, guides, evaluates, solicits, and above all, appears to hold certain assumptions about the nature of learning and the learner. There remains the question of what, besides appropriate teachers, should be built into the implementation of an open school. An opportunity to collect opinions on this question systematically was provided by a conference on open schooling sponsored by the University of Minnesota.

Andrew Ahlgren

Papers

Changing Attitudes towards Science among Adolescents

Predictors of the Social Environment of Learning

The Selection of a National Random Sample of Teachers for Experimental Curriculum Evaluation

Generalized regression analysis

Perceptions of Open Schooling.