T/F Answers

"Flow" (as described by Csikszentmihalyi) is most likely to occur in areas where students are challenged and perceive themselves as having a low degree of skill.

False

A person's intelligence can be evaluated directly when a variety of intelligence tests are used.

False

A student's style of learning is typically consistent across schools, grades, and subjects.

False

A very small part of preinstruction assessment is informal observation.

False

According to Kohlberg's theory of moral development, for an individual at the conventional level, morality is completely internalized and not based on external standards.

False

According to Piaget, language plays a major role in influencing a child's cognitive development.

False

According to Vygotsky's theory, the culture in which a student lives has minimal influence on the knowledge, skills, and beliefs of students.

False

According to a recent survey, the "best teachers" expect too much from students.

False

According to recent research, girls and boys enter first grade with roughly equal levels of self-esteem, but by the middle school years, boys' self-esteem is significantly lower than is girls'.

False

Adolescents who have their activities and behaviors monitored by their parents often become delinquents.

False

Although signs of ADHD are often present at birth, children with ADHD are not usually classified until the preschool years.

False

An example of relational aggression would be one child yelling at his/her friend.

False

Application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are best assessed using multiple-choice and true-false questions.

False

As long as a teacher possesses expert knowledge in a particular subject area, she will be an effective teacher in transferring content information.

False

Atkinson and Shiffrin claimed that the length of time that information is held in the short-term memory has little influence on the chance that this information will make it into long-term memory.

False

Behaviorism is the view that behavior should be explained by mental processes rather than observable actions

False

Boys are equally likely as girls to be diagnosed with an autistic disorder.

False

Case studies are typically used when controlled research is conducted in the laboratory.

False

Children of authoritarian parents tend to be self-reliant and have high self-esteem.

False

Constructivist teaching in science emphasizes the learning of facts and concepts.

False

Creative thinking is directly correlated to intelligence.

False

Critics of learner-centered instruction argue that it gives insufficient attention to the process of learning and too much attention to academic content.

False

Diagnostic testing is a group of individualized subject matter tests designed for a particular level of students.

False

Direct instruction is a structured, student-centered approach that is characterized by low teacher expectations for student progress, minimizing the time students spend on academic tasks.

False

Discrimination refers to one's ability to distinguish between the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus.

False

During parent-teacher conferences, the teacher's primary responsibility is to share the student's grades.

False

Early adulthood involves the transition from childhood to adulthood.

False

Effective teachers fail to help students become self-motivated to learn.

False

Effective teachers only use assessment to document their students' performance after instruction.

False

Everything we know is learned

False

For many students, anxiety decreases across the school years.

False

For most students, discovery learning is least effective when guided.

False

Giftedness is dependent upon innate ability, not family support or time spent in training and practice.

False

Girls and boys are equally likely to be involved in instances of bullying

False

Girls are equally likely as boys to be classified as having a learning disability.

False

Grades help to establish how students measure up and determine whether they meet graduation criteria. This refers to the "informational" aspect of grading.

False

If teachers want to effectively incorporate writing into the curriculum, they should focus on free-writing assignments and forgo more formal assignments, as students may get overwhelmed.

False

If the results of correlational research indicate that two traits are highly correlated, then one trait most likely is the cause of the other.

False

In 2006, 20 percent of female-headed families lived in poverty

False

In a recent analysis of state-by-state comparisons of academic standards, most states have set the bar high with rigorous standards.

False

In promoting concept formation it is more effective to present the entire concept map to students than to risk students making errors by completing one on their own.

False

In the United States, females are equally likely as males to drop out of high school, and dropout rates among all races are equal.

False

Individuals in collectivistic cultures typically develop successfully even if they lack a positive sense of self and a sense of connectedness to others.

False

Ineffective teachers possess commitment and motivation.

False

It is rarely successful to involve students when making classroom rules because students have a tendency to come up with ridiculous ideas.

False

Low-road transfer occurs most often with novel skills.

False

Metacognitive functioning in mathematics is facilitated when the focus is on whether students' answers are right or wrong.

False

Most experts agree that genetics (rather than environment) determines a child's intelligence.

False

Most experts agree that intelligence is best defined as a person's verbal ability and problem-solving skills.

False

Motivation experts worry that No Child Left Behind's emphasis on testing and accountability encourages mastery rather than performance motivation.

False

Multiple-choice items cannot be used to engage students in higher-level, critical thinking.

False

Network theories describe how information is transformed from short-term to long-term memory

False

Of students with disabilities, the most common disability is serious emotional disturbance.

False

Pedagogical content knowledge refers to comprehensive knowledge about content of a particular discipline.

False

People who have general intelligence do not have specific intellectual abilities.

False

Phonology, the sound system of a language, plays a minor role in the early development of reading skills.

False

Piaget believed that children who engage in "private speech" are more socially competent than children who do not.

False

Recent research supports the idea that the brains of males and females are far more different in structure than they are similar.

False

Regardless of his or her field of expertise, an expert has a better memory than a novice when presented with a new and unfamiliar topic

False

Rehearsal involves learning new things by adding personal meaning to the information.

False

Researchers have found that it takes English-language learners approximately three years to develop speaking and reading proficiency, and most bilingual programs last this long.

False

Schools are spending more time on performance-based assessment because of the increase in high-stakes tests that use these testing methods.

False

Self-regulatory learning consists of imposing external factors to control the student's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

False

Since the turn of the 20 th century, children's scores on IQ tests have decreased dramatically.

False

Students in the "action zone" should be discouraged from participating in class discussions.

False

Students who are good problem solvers are usually afraid to make mistakes; therefore, they are more likely to hold out for the right answer.

False

Teachers can safely assume that students who show creative thinking skills in mathematics will also exhibit these skills in language and art.

False

Teachers who demonstrate that they care about students as individuals are less likely to gain student cooperation because this behavior undermines the teacher's authority.

False

The Montessori approach to early childhood education emphasizes student rights and parent participation.

False

The achievement level of individuals in one's peer group has little influence on the achievement level of the student.

False

The behavioral perspective emphasizes the student's motivation with respect to internal incentives, while the cognitive perspective emphasizes the importance of external incentives.

False

The cells in the brain responsible for processing information stop dividing early in childhood. Brain development is not influenced by outside experiences or actions

False

The exosystem refers to the culture in which students and teachers live, including the society's values and customs.

False

The first step in solving a problem is to develop good problem-solving strategies.

False

The fourteen Learner-Centered Principles (American Psychological Association Board of Educational Affairs) can be classified into the following four main categories: cognitive and metacognitive, motivational and emotional, socioeconomic and environmental, and teaching and learning styles.

False

The phonics approach to reading emphasizes decoding skills and therefore reflects the social constructivist view of reading.

False

Thinking about personal associations with information can be distracting, thus making it more difficult for students to remember.

False

Validity is the extent to which a test produces similar results when administered on multiple occasions, but not the accuracy with which a test measures what it is intended to measure.

False

Very few state-mandated tests have criterion-referenced scoring.

False

When a middle-class, white, male student takes a nationally standardized test, his final score is computed on the basis of a norm group of similar middle-class, white, male students.

False

When a student creates a poster, we can observe his or her mental processes.

False

When asking questions during class, it is best to ask questions that can be answered with a yes or no.

False

When communicating test results to parents, it is best to avoid discussion of the student's strengths, weaknesses, and overall progress.

False

When parents emphasize academics or extracurricular activities in the elementary years, there is little to no impact on a child's desire to continue participating in similar activities in adolescence.

False

When speaking with students, teachers should use vocabulary that is just beyond the level of understanding for their particular grade level.

False

When you give a multiple-choice test to students in the first through fourth grades, it is best to ask students to write their answers on a separate sheet of paper.

False

If a teacher plans effectively, he or she need not keep all the details of the lesson in mind all of the time; thus the teacher is free to focus on dialog and immediate interactions.

True

If students know that they will be held accountable for their work, they are more likely to use class time efficiently.

True

In a recent study, high school students who were encouraged to organize their own experiments demonstrated more care and interest in their laboratory work than their counterparts who were given detailed instructions.

True

In grades 3 through 5, mathematics instruction should address multiplicative reasoning, equivalence, and computational fluency.

True

In some instances, extrinsic rewards can undermine learning.

True

In the most recent Gallup Poll, the American public rated "lack of discipline" as the second most important problem in schools, after "lack of financial support."

True

Kohlberg believed that a child's moral thinking can be advanced through discussions with others who reason at the next higher stage.

True

Lacking friends has been linked to depression and lower grades in middle school children.

True

Learning involves a relatively permanent influence on behavior, which comes about through experience

True

Memory and thinking are central to the cognitive information-processing approach.

True

Most persons who are avid readers indicate that they have at least one other person to talk with about reading and what to read next.

True

Motivation and emotion are also important aspects of learning.

True

Nonverbal communication is an important part of active listening.

True

Nonverbal cues are more appropriate forms of intervention for minor misbehavior than moderate, repetitive, or severe misbehavior.

True

Norm-referenced grading refers to the policy of comparing students' performance to that of their peers.

True

One message conveyed by self-regulatory learning is that learning is a personal experience that requires active and dedicated participation on the part of the student.

True

One of the major figures in shaping the field of educational psychology was E. L. Thorndike.

True

One way to improve transfer is to give students representations or models, such as matrices or checklists that help them structure a problem-solving activity.

True

Our ability to learn new things depends considerably on what we already know about them.

True

Parents and teachers can enhance the development of a child's intelligence by exposing the child to an enriching environment.

True

Piaget's stages of cognitive development are an example of discontinuity in development in which the individual undergoes a qualitative change when progressing from one stage to the next.

True

Planning, problem solving, revising, and metacognitive strategies are important to enhancing students' writing skills according to the cognitive approach to writing.

True

Poor classroom managers are likely to be distracted by behaviors that do not require attention.

True

Recent research (Chiu, 2007) shows that science achievement is linked to a student's family support and access to resources.

True

Recent research shows that, when learning a second language, adolescents and adults learn new vocabulary easier than new sounds or grammar while very young children are better able to pronounce words with a native-like accent.

True

Relationships among students from different cultural backgrounds typically improve when students share personal worries, successes, failures, interests, and other information about themselves.

True

Reliable measures are stable, dependable, and relatively free of errors of measurement.

True

Research suggests that participation in cooperative groups helps increase students' motivation to learn.

True

Researchers have found that collaborative teaming often results in gains for children, as well as improved skills and attitudes for teachers.

True

Response cost refers to taking away a certain positive reinforcer when a student displays an undesirable behavior. It usually involves some type of penalty or fine.

True

Rewards that are used to control students' behavior are unlikely to promote self-regulation and responsibility.

True

Schema theories state that when we construct information, we fit it into information that already exists in our minds

True

Social cognitive theory states that social and cognitive factors, as well as behavior, play important roles in learning.

True

Social views of gender argue that children's gender development is shaped by families, schools, peers, and the media.

True

Some critics of the constructivist approaches in science argue that too much attention is given to inquiry skills and not enough is given to discipline-specific information.

True

Some research suggests that children with poor peer relations are more likely to drop out of school and display delinquent behavior when they reach adolescence.

True

Standardized tests can be used to help teachers diagnose students' strengths and weaknesses.

True

Students show improved achievement when a framework is established for new material. This helps orient students toward learning the material.

True

Students who are gifted are often underchallenged and may become disruptive, skip classes, and lose interest in achieving.

True

Subgoaling, a strategy used in problem solving, involves setting intermediate goals that put the student in a better position of attaining the desired goal.

True

The chronosystem refers to a student's sociohistorical conditions, such as whether he or she attended preschool.

True

The concept of person-situation interaction states that the best way to characterize an individual's personality is not in terms of personal traits or characteristics alone, but also in terms of the situation involved.

True

The decision to place a student in a class for students who are mentally retarded should not be based on the results of a single group intelligence test.

True

The humanistic perspective emphasizes an individual's capacity for personal growth.

True

The impulsive student has trouble locating relevant information from a field of irrelevant information.

True

The more extensively a student processes new information, the more likely it is that the student will remember it

True

The whole-language approach to reading focuses on becoming immersed in the natural world of print and should be integrated with other skills and subjects.

True

Though teachers cannot think for their students, teachers can help guide students to construct their own thinking.

True

Though, on average, white American school children score 10 to 15 points higher on IQ tests than African American children, approximately 20 percent of African American children score higher than do half of all white school children.

True

Transfer occurs when a person's previous experiences and knowledge affect learning or problem solving in a new situation

True

True/false items are useful for outcomes where there are only two possible alternatives.

True

Two effective nonverbal strategies for handling minor problem behavior include (1) making eye contact and (2) moving closer to the student(s).

True

Vygotsky believed that private speech represents an early transition in becoming more socially communicative.

True

Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development has stimulated considerable interest in the view that knowledge is situated and collaborative.

True

When administering a standardized test to students, it is important for the teacher to communicate a positive attitude and to describe the nature and purpose of the test.

True

When assigning children to groups, it is best to have approximately equal numbers of boys and girls.

True

When students teach something to others, such as during cooperative learning or peer tutoring, they tend to learn it more deeply.

True

When taking standardized tests, students should be encouraged to skip difficult items and return to them later.

True

When they are not having a seizure, children with epilepsy exhibit normal behavior.

True

William James is responsible for writing the first psychology textbook, Principles of Psychology, in 1890.

True

With early intervention and extensive support by the child's family and professionals, many children with Down syndrome can grow into independent adults.

True

With the increase of inclusion, the regular classroom teacher is responsible for providing more of the education of children with disabilities than in the past.

True

Emotional and behavioral disorders may involve relationships, aggression, depression, or fears associated with personal or school matters

True

Examples of external incentives that teachers can use include stars, grades, displaying of work, and compliments.

True

Failure syndrome refers to having low expectations and giving up at the first sign of difficulty.

True

From the social constructivist perspective, it is important that students participate in a writing community to understand author/reader relationships.

True

Gender bias is present in classrooms, as evidenced by boys being more likely than girls to be identified as having learning problems and problem behavior.

True

Good interviews and surveys involve concrete, specific, and unambiguous questions.

True

Good tutoring involves scaffolding by providing students only the assistance they need given their level of performance at the time.

True

Group rewards are one of the most important conditions for effective cooperative learning.

True

Highly educated parents are likely to believe that their involvement in their children's education is important.

True

Howard Gardner is considering including existential intelligence, which involves concern and reasoning about meaning in life.

True

"People, places, and environments" is an instructional theme proposed by the National Council for the Social Sciences.

True

A child's skills and work habits when entering kindergarten are among the best predictors of academic motivation and performance in both elementary and secondary school.

True

A learning target consists of what the students know and should be able to do.

True

A metacognitive activity occurs when students use self-awareness to adapt and manage strategies during actual problem solving and thinking.

True

A standardized test often allows a student's performance to be compared with that of other students at the same age or grade level, in many cases on a national basis.

True

A survey battery is a group of individualized subject matter tests designed for a particular level of students.

True

According to No Child Left Behind , if underperforming schools don't improve after four years, states are required to implement major staff and curriculum changes in the schools, and if progress is not made after five years, states must close the schools.

True

According to both Piaget and Vygotsky, teachers should play the role of facilitator rather than director.

True

Adolescents are more skillful at many aspects of inductive reasoning than are children, including analogies, but not as good as young adults.

True

An important teaching goal is to help students master the main concepts in a subject rather than just memorizing facts.

True

As children grow, their capacity for self-regulation increases.

True

Attention is the focusing of mental resources

True

Because of the potential for bias in standardized tests, it is important to assess students using a variety of methods.

True

Bronfenbrenner's theory has been instrumental in bringing to attention the importance of looking at children's lives in more than one setting.

True

Children benefit when their parents and teachers actively engage them in conversation, ask questions, and emphasize interactive rather than directive language.

True

Children with disabilities must be educated in a setting that is as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have the disability are educated.

True

Complaints of earaches, colds, and allergies could be a sign that the child has a hearing impairment

True

Constructivist learning is best supported by curricular focus rather than pure discovery.

True

Critics of state-mandated testing argue that such testing encourages teachers to teach for the test, thus focusing specifically on material expected to be on the exam rather than presenting a wider variety of material that teachers might think is worthwhile.

True

Dejohn is a high-achieving student who is also a self-regulatory learner. Dejohn most likely sets specific learning goals and uses more learning strategies as compared to his low-achieving peers.

True