Key Behaviors Contributing to Effective Teaching

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EFFECTIVE TEACHING, CHARACTERISTICS OF EGOCENTRISM EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE EMOTION AND MEMORY EMPATHY ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE EPISODIC MEMORY EQUILIBRATION ERIKSON’S THEORY OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ESSAY TESTS ETHICS AND RESEARCH ETHNICITY AND RACE ETHNOGRAPHY EVALUATION Further Readings Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Task Force on Deﬁnition and Terminology. (1977). The deﬁnition of educational technology. Washington, DC: Author. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED192759) Reiser, R. A., & Ely, D. P. (1997). The ﬁeld of educational technology as reﬂected in its deﬁnitions. Educational Technology, Research and Development , 45 (3), 63–72. Web Sites Association for Educational Communications and Technology: http://www.aect.org International Technology Education Association: http://www.iteaconnect.org E FFECTIVE T EACHING , C HARACTERISTICS OF Over the past several decades, a revolution has occurred in the deﬁnitions of ‘‘good’’ teaching. Researchers have found that deﬁning good teachers by community ideals, personality characteristi cs,numberofcredithours earned, or college grade point average proved disap- pointing, as these variables showed little relationship to what teachers actually do in the classroom. This directed researchers to study the impact of speciﬁc teacher activities on the speciﬁc cognitive and affective behaviors of their students. The term good teaching changed to effective teaching , and the research focus shifted from studying teachers exclusively to studying teachers and their effects on students. This new approach to studying classroom behavior has made the teacher–student re lationship in the classroom the focus of modern deﬁnitions of effective teaching. Linking Teacher Behavior With Student Performance During this new era of research in classrooms, researchers developed methods of studying the class- room interaction patterns of teachers and students. Their goal was to discover which patterns of teacher behavior promoted desirable student outcomes. With a rich variety of classroom observation instruments, a picture of classroom activity could be captured within and across research studies and could be related to various measures of school achievement, such as better scores on classroom and standardized tests, an increase in the incidence of successful prob- lem solving, and improved learning skills. It was in this manner that consistent patterns of effective teaching began to emerge in studies con- ducted by different researchers. As in all research, some studies provided contradictory results or found no relationships among certain types of classroom interactions and student outcomes. But many studies found patterns of teacher–student interaction that con- sistently produced desirable student outcomes. The fol- lowing are some of the most important characteristics of effective teaching to emerge from this research. Key Behaviors Contributing to Effective Teaching From this research approximately 10 teacher behaviors have shown promising relationships to desirable stu- dent performance, primarily as measured by classroom assessments and standardized tests. Five of these beha- viors have been consistent ly supported by research studies over the past three decades. Another ﬁve have had some support from the research ﬁndings and appear logically related to effective teaching. The ﬁrst ﬁve are key behaviors, because they are considered essential for effective teaching. The second ﬁve are helping behaviors that can be used in combinations to implement the key behaviors. The ﬁve key behaviors for effective teaching are (1) lesson clarity, (2) instruc- tional variety, (3) teacher task, (4) student engagement in the learning process, and (5) student success rate. Lesson Clarity Lesson clarity refers to how clear a teacher’s pre- sentation is to the class, as indicated in the following examples: More Effective Teachers • Make their points clear to learners who may be at different levels of understanding • Explain concepts in ways that help students follow along in a logical step-by-step order • Have an oral delivery that is direct, audible to all students, and free of distracting mannerisms Less Effective Teachers • Use vague, ambiguous, or indeﬁnite language • Use overly complicated sentences that convey more than a single thought at a time Effective Teaching, Characteristics of 321 • Give directions that often result in student requests for clariﬁcation One of the ﬁndings from research on lesson clarity is that teachers vary considerably on this behavior. Not all teachers communicate clearly and directly to their students without wandering, speaking above stu- dents’ levels of comprehension, or using speech pat- terns that impair their presentation’s clarity. A teacher with a high degree of clarity spends less time going over material and has more questions answered cor- rectly the ﬁrst time through the content, allowing more time for instruction. Clarity is a complex behavior because it is related to many others, such as a teacher’s organization of the content, lesson familiarity, and delivery strategies (e.g., whether a discussion, recitat ion, question-and-answer, or small-group format is used). Nevertheless, research shows that both the cognitive clarity and oral clarity of presentations vary substan tially among t eachers. This, in turn, produces differences in student achievement. Instructional Variety Instructional variety refers to a teacher’s variability or ﬂexibility of deli very during the presentation of a les- son. One of the most effective ways of creating variety during instruction is to ask questions. Many different types of questions can be integrated into the pacing and sequencing of a lesson to create meaningful variation. Therefore, the effective teacher needs to know the art of asking questions and how to discriminate among dif- ferent question formats—fac t questions, process ques- tions, convergent questions , and divergent questions. Another aspect of variety in teaching is perhaps the most obvious: the use of learning materials, equip- ment, displays, and space in the classroom. The physi- cal texture and visual variety of the classroom contributes to instructional variety. This, in turn, pro- motes student engagement in the learning process and student achievement on end-of-unit tests. For exam- ple, some studies found the amount of disruptive behavior to be less in classrooms that had more varied activities and materials. Others have shown variety to be related to student attention. Teacher Task Orientation Teacher task orientation is a key behavior that refers to how much classroom time the teacher devotes to the task of teaching an academic subject. The more time allocated to the task of teaching a speciﬁc topic, the greater the opportunity students have to learn. Some task-related decisions that a teacher must make are 1. How much time do I spend planning for teaching and getting my students ready to learn? 2. How much time do I spend presenting, asking ques- tions, and encouraging students to inquire or think independently? 3. How much time do I spend assessing my learners’ performance? These questions pertain to how much material is presented, learned, and assessed, as opposed to how much time is delegated to procedural matters (e.g., taking attendance, distributing handouts, collecting homework, checking for materials). All teachers need to prepare their students to learn and want them to enjoy learning. However, most research studies agree that student performance is higher in classrooms with teachers who spend the maximum amount of time available teaching subject-speciﬁc content as opposed to devoting large amounts of time to the process and materials needed to acquire that content. It follows that classrooms in which teacher–student interactions focus more on subject-matter content that allows their students the maximum opportunity to learn and to practice what was taught are more likely to have higher rates of achievement. But, these classrooms also are those in which a dynamic relationship between teacher and learner provides the energy that motivates and challenges the learner to reach increas- ingly higher levels of understanding. Student Engagement in the Learning Process Student engagement in the learning process—or engaged learning time —is a key behavior that refers to the amount of time students devote to learning in a classroom. Student engagement is related to, but dif- ferent from, a teacher’s task orientation. Distinct from a teacher’s task orientation—or the amount of time devoted to teaching a topic—is the time students are actively engaged in learning the material being taught. This has been called their engagement rate ,orthe percentage of time devoted to learning when students are actually on task, engaged with the instructional 322 Effective Teaching, Characteristics of materials, and beneﬁting from the activities being pre- sented. Even though a teacher may be task oriented and providing maximum content coverage, some stu- dents may be disengaged. This means they are not actively thinking about, working with, or using what is being presented. Such disengagement can involve an emotional or mental detachment from the lesson that may or may not be obvious. When students jump out of their seats, talk, read a magazine, or leave for the restroom, they obviously are not engaged in instruction. Students also can be disengaged in far more subtle ways, such as looking attentive while their thoughts are many miles away. An unpleasant fact of life is that a portion of every class may be off task at any one time, distracted for personal reasons and o ften ampliﬁed by an impend- ing lunch period, a Friday afternoon, or day before a holiday. Correcting this type of disengagement may be much more difﬁcult, requiring changes in the struc- ture of the task itself and th e cognitive demands placed on the learner. Researchers have contributed useful suggestions for increasing learning time and, more importantly, student engage ment during learning. Their work has provided the following suggestions for tea- chers to promote student engagement: 1. Set rules that let pupils attend to their personal needs and work routines without obtaining permis- sion each time. 2. Move around the room to monitor pupils’ seatwork and to communicate an awareness of student progress. 3. Ensure that independent assignments are interest- ing, worthwhile, and easy enough to be completed by each pupil without teacher direction. 4. Minimize time-consuming activities, such as giving directions and organizing t he class for instruction, by writing the daily schedule on the board. This will ensure that pupils know where to go and what to do. 5. Make abundant use of resources and activities that are at, or slightly above, a student’s current level of understanding. 6. Avoid timing errors. Act promptly to prevent mis- behaviors from occurring or increasing in severity so they do not inﬂuence others in the class. Student Success Rate A ﬁfth key effective teaching behavior is student success rate. Student success rate refers to the rate at which students understand and correctly complete exercises and assignments. A crucial aspect of the previously cited research on task orientation and student engagement is the level of difﬁculty of the material that was presented. In these studies, level of difﬁculty was measured by the rate at which students understood and correctly answered questions on tests, exercises, and assign- ments. Three levels of difﬁculty are 1. High success —the student understands the subject matter taught and makes only occasional careless errors; 2. Moderate success —the student has partial under- standing but makes some substantive errors; and 3. Low success —the student has little or no under- standing of the subject matter. Not surprisingly, researchers have found that student engagement, that is, the time the learner is actively engaged with, thinking about, and working with the content being taught, is clo sely related to student suc- cess rate. Instruction that p roduces a moderate-to-high success rate results in increased performance, because more content is covered at the learner’s current level of understanding. The average student in a typical classroom spends about half of the time working on tasks that provide the opportunity for high success. But researchers have found that students who spend more than the average time in high-success activities have higher achieve- ment, better retention, and more positive attitudes toward school. These ﬁndings have led to the sugges- tion that students should spend about 60 % to 80 % of their time on tasks that allow almost complete under- standing of the material being taught with only occa- sional errors. Summary of Five Key Behaviors All ﬁve key behaviors—lesson clarity, instructional variety, teacher task orientation, student engagement, and success rate—are essential for effective teaching. Classroom researchers are studying other effective teaching behaviors and attaining a more thorough understanding of those already described. In other words, there can be no simple answer to the question, ‘‘What is an effective teacher?’’ Many activities must be orchestrated into patterns of behavior for teach- ing to be effective. The identiﬁcation of only ﬁve Effective Teaching, Characteristics of 323 behaviors makes teaching appear deceptively simple. However, as the following section reveals, success in implementing these ﬁve key behaviors in the class- room will be assisted by other, helping behaviors. However, for the ﬁrst time, research has provided a foundation for better deﬁnitions of effective teach- ing and for the training of teachers. Whereas these ﬁve behaviors constitute the skeleton of the effective teacher, there remains the heart, mind, and body to complete this picture of an effective teacher. Helping Behaviors Related to Effective Teaching To ﬁll out the picture of an effective teacher, there are other behaviors that aid the teacher in performing the ﬁve key behaviors. These behaviors can be thought of as helping behaviors for performing the ﬁve key behaviors. Research ﬁndings for helping behaviors, although promising, are not as strong and consistent as those that identiﬁed the ﬁve key behaviors. The research has not identiﬁed explicitly how these behaviors should be used. This is why helping behaviors need to be employed in the context of other behaviors to be effective, making them catalysts working in harmony with the ﬁve key behaviors rather than agents unto themselves. Among these helping behaviors are (a) using student ideas and contributions, (b) structur- ing, © questioning, (d) probing, and (e) teacher affect and the teacher–learner relationship. Using Student Ideas and Contributions Using student ideas and contributions includes acknowledging, modifying, applying, comparing, and summarizing student responses to promote the goals of a lesson and to encourage student participation. Note how any one of these activities could be used in achieving one or more of the ﬁve key behaviors: • Acknowledging: Taking a student’s correct response and repeating it to the class (to increase lesson clarity) • Modifying: Using a student’s idea by rephrasing it or conceptualizing it in the teacher’s words or another student’s words (to create instructional variety) • Applying: Using a student’s idea to teach an infer- ence or take the next step in a logical analysis of a problem (to increase success rate) • Comparing: Taking a student’s idea and drawing a relationship between it and ideas expressed earlier by the student or another student (to encourage engagement in the learning process) • Summarizing: Using what was said by a student or group of students as a recapitulation or review of concepts taught (to enhance task orientation) More recently, the use of student ideas and contri- butions has been extended to reasoning, problem solv- ing, and independent thinking. This has been achieved through teacher-mediated dialogue that helps learners construct or restructure what is being learned using their own ideas, experiences, and thought patterns. Teacher-mediated dialogue asks the learner not just to respond with a correct answer but also to internalize the meaning of what was learned by elaborating, extending, and commenting on it using the learner’s own unique thoughts and experiences. In this manner, learners are encouraged to communicate the processes by which they are learning, thereby helping them to construct their own meanings and understandings of the content; this is called constructivist teaching. Use of student ideas and contributions also can increase a student’s engagement in the learning pro- cess. Thus, it has become a frequently used catalyst for helping achieve that key behavior. Research indicates that student ideas and cont ributions, especially when used in the context of the naturally occurring dialogue of the classroom, are more strongly and c onsistently related to student engagement than simply approving a student’s answer with ‘‘good,’’ ‘‘correct,’’ or ‘‘right.’’ Structuring Teacher comments made for the purpose of organiz- ing what is to come, or summarizing what has gone before, are called structuri ng. Used before an instruc- tional activity or question, st ructuring serves as instruc- tional scaffolding that assists learners in bridging the gap between what they are capable of doing on their own and what they are capable of doing with help from the teacher, thereby aiding t heir understanding and use of the material to be taught. Used at the conclusion of an instructional activity or question, structuring rein- forces learned content and places it in proper relation to other content already taught. Both forms of structur- ing are related to student ac hievement and are effective catalysts for performing the ﬁve key behaviors. One method of structuring is to signal that a shift in direction or content is about to occur. A clear 324 Effective Teaching, Characteristics of signal alerts students to the impending change. Sig- nals such as ‘‘Now that we have studied how the pipeﬁsh change their color and movements, we will learn … ’’ help students switch gears and provide a per- spective that makes new content more meaningful. Another type of structuring uses emphasis. This method of structuring, called an advance organizer , helps the student to organize what is to follow. In this instance, students are asked to consider questions that might be raised and to know that generalizations beyond the concepts discussed will be expected. Phrases such as ‘‘Now this is important,’’ ‘‘We will return to this point later,’’ and ‘‘Remember this’’ are called verbal markers and can be used to emphasize important points. In addition to verbal markers and advance organi- zers, the effective teacher organizes a lesson into an activity structure. An activity structure is a set of related tasks that increase in cognitive complexity and that, to some degree, may be placed under the control of the learner. Activity structures can be built in many ways (e.g., cooperatively, competitively, indepen- dently) to vary the demands they make on the learner and to give tempo and momentum to a lesson. For the effective teacher, they are an important means for engaging students in the learning process and moving them from simple recall of facts to higher response levels that require reasoning, critical thinking, and problem-solving behavior. Questioning Questioning is another important helping behavior. Few other topics have been researched as much as the teacher’s use of questions. One of the most important outcomes of research on quest ioning has been the distinc- tion between content questions and process questions. Content questions. Teachers pose content questions to encourage the student to respond directly to the content taught. An example is when a teacher asks a question to see if students can recall and understand speciﬁc material. The correct answer is known well in advance by the teacher. It also has been conveyed directly in class, in the text, or both. Few, if any, interpretations or alternative meanings of the question are possible. Researchers have used various terms to describe content questions, such as direct, lower- order, convergent, closed, and fact questions. Some estimates have suggested that up to 80 % of the questions teachers ask refer directly to speciﬁc content and have readily discernible and unambiguous answers. Perhaps even more important is the fact that approximately the same percentage of teacher-made test items and behavioral objectives are written at the level of recall, knowledge, or fact. Therefore, test items, behavioral objectives, and most instruction seem to emphasize readily known facts as they are presented in curriculum guides, workbooks, and texts, leaving much less time for higher-order thinking, such as problem solving, decision making, and valuing. For the effective teacher, content questions are rarely ends in themselves but rather a means of engaging students in the learning process by getting them to act on, work through, or think about the material pre- sented, leading to higher thought processes. Process questions. To problem-solve, to guide, to arouse curiosity, to encourage creativity, to analyze, to synthesize, and to judge also are goals of instruc- tion that should be reﬂected by questioning strategies. For these goals, content is not an end itself but a means of achieving higher-order goals. Researchers have used various terms to describe process questions, such as indirect, higher-order, divergent, open, and concept questions. Process questions encourage thinking and problem solving by requiring the learner to use personal sources of knowledge to actively construct her or his own inter- pretations and meanings rather than acquiring under- standing by giving back knowledge already organized in the form in which it was told. Process questions also help emphasize the learner’s direct experience and the dialogue of the classroom as instructional tools while de-emphasizing lecturing and telling. Probing Another important helping behavior is probing, which refers to teacher statements that often follow questions that encourage students to elaborate on an answer, either their own or another student’s. Probing may take the form of a general question or can include other expressions that elicit clariﬁcation of an answer, solicit additional information about a response, or redirect a student’s response in a more fruitful direction. Probing often is used to shift a discussion to some higher thought level. Generally, student achievement is highest when the eliciting, soli- citing, and (if necessary) redirecting occur in cycles. This systematically leads the discussion to a higher Effective Teaching, Characteristics of 325 level of complexity, as when interrelationships, general- izations, and problem solutions are being sought. Teacher Affect and the Teacher – Learner Relationship Anyone who has ever been in a classroom where the teacher’s presentation was lifeless, static, and with- out vocal variety can appreciate the commonsense value of the affective side of teaching. However, unlike the behaviors discussed previously, affect cannot be easily captured in transcripts of teaching or by classroom interaction instruments. Consequently, narrowly focused research instruments often miss a tea- cher’s affective nature, which emerges from a more holistic view of the classroom. This affective nature is the foundation from which effective teachers build a warm and nurturing relationship with their learners. What the instruments miss, the students see clearly. Students are good perceivers of the emotions and intentions underlying a teacher’s actions, and they often respond accordingly. A teacher who is excited about the subject being taught and shows it by facial expression, voice inﬂection, gesture, and movement, communicating respect and caring for the learner, is more likely to hold the attention of students and moti- vate them to higher levels of achievement than is a teacher who does not exhibit these behaviors. As a result, students will be more willing to actively engage themselves in the learning process. Research has indicated that students take their cues from these affective signs and lower or heighten their engagement with the lesson accordingly. Enthusiasm is an important aspect of a teacher’s affect in that it represents the teacher’s vigor, power, involvement, excitement, and interest during a classroom presenta- tion and his or her willingness to share this emotion with learners, who will want to respond in kind. Enthusiasm is contagious and can be displayed to stu- dents in many ways, the most common being vocal inﬂection, gesture, eye contact, and animation, but most importantly, how the teacher coordinates these signs to communicate that she or he cares about and respects the experiences, knowledge, and understand- ings students bring to the classroom. A teacher’s enthusiasm has been found to be important in promot- ing student engagement in the learning process and achievement. As research has turned from studying the individual characteristics of teachers to their interaction patterns with students, key and helping behaviors have been identiﬁed that are related to desirable outcomes in lear- ners as measured by classroom and standardized tests of achievement, student projects, and performance assessments. Although not the only behaviors that deﬁne effective teaching, these key and helping beha- viors provide a foundation for identifying, orchestrat- ing, and teaching effective patterns of teacher–student interaction that result in desirable learner outcomes. Gary Borich See also Constructivism; Expert Teachers; PRAXIS TM ; Teaching Strategies Further Readings Berliner, D. (1984). The half-full glass: A review of research on teaching. In P. Hosford (Ed.), Using what we know about teaching (pp. 51–77). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Berry, B. (2003). What it means to be a ‘‘highly qualiﬁed teacher.’’ Chapel Hill, NC: Southeast Center for Teaching Quality. Borich, G. (2007). Effective teaching methods (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. Brophy, J. (2002). Teaching: Educational Practices series— 1. United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Geneva, Switzerland: International Bureau of Education. Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., LePage, P., Hammerness, K., & Duffy, H. (Eds.). (2005). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fisher, C., Filby, N., Maliave, R., Cahen, L., Dishaw, M., More, J., et al. (1979). Teaching behaviors, academic learning time and student achievement: Final report of phase III-B, beginning teacher evaluation study (Tech. Rep. No. V-1). San Francisco: Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. McDermott, P., & Rothenberg, J. (2000, April). The characteristics of effective teachers in high poverty schools: Triangulating our data. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED442887) Richardson, V. (Ed.). (2001). Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Rosenshine, B., & Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 376–391). New York: Macmillan. Wayne, A., & Youngs, P. (2003). Teacher characteristics and student achievement gains: A review. Review of Educational Research , 73 (1), 89–122. 326 Effective Teaching, Characteristics of E GOCENTRISM A child playing hide-and-seek runs to the corner of the room and covers her eyes with a pillow while her father counts to 10, believing that if she cannot see her father, then her father cannot see her. A thirsty grocery shopper spends more money than usual on bottled water and decides not to buy the salty pretzels that are on his shopping list. Political conservatives responding to an Internet poll estimate that there are more like-minded conservatives in the population than political liberals. All of these people are reasoning egocentrically. That is, they are all reasoning about the world from their own current perspectives. In the ﬁrst place, people process incoming information from their own perspective. Then, they extrapolate in two ways: temporally, extending present knowledge to the past and future; and socially, extending self knowl- edge to others. Education involves acquiring knowl- edge and communicating that knowledge to others, and egocentric bias in judgment is therefore a central—but easily overlooked—issue for educators. History Jean Piaget is credited with the classic demonstration of egocentric reasoning in children. In one version of his experiments, children viewed a three-dimensional mountain scene that included a house that was visible from their perspective but occluded from the imagi- nary perspective of a stuffed bear on the other side of the scene. The children indicated that the house could also be seen from the bear’s perspective, leading Pia- get to conclude that children of a certain age are unable to recognize that other beings can have differ- ing points of view. Subsequent experiments revealed potential methodological ﬂaws in the mountain task, but improved paradigms led researchers to draw essentially the same conclusions. Since Piaget’s demonstrations, research on egocen- trism has advanced in various ways. First, egocentric biases have been widely demonstrated in adults. Like children, adults readily activate egocentric knowledge when rendering judgments, but unlike children, adults learn to correct egocentric knowledge to accommo- date another person’s perspective. Such corrective procedures require time, mental effort, and awareness of the need to correct. Insufﬁcient correction is a com- mon cause of egocentric biases in judgments among adults. Second, research on egocentric biases has expanded beyond visual perspective to incorporate perspectives based on knowledge, experience, culture, attitudes, and mood. Consequences of Egocentrism Egocentric reasoning can occur in at least three stages of processing and can, in turn, have consequences for both acquiring and communicating knowledge. First, people must make sense of their environment by forming representations based on their perceptions. With visual information, for example, people are gen- erally good at forming three-dimensional representa- tions, based on their own singular perspectives, and inferring others’ perspectives from this. Consequences may emerge, however, when they neglect to consider others’ perspectives simultaneously. This can be illus- trated by the presenter who repeatedly points at his own computer monitor, visible only to him, rather than gesturing toward the projection of this image, which is visible to the entire audience. Second, people understand the past and the future according to their current perspectives. For example, people often use their current knowledge when judging the past. This leads to the logic referenced by aphorisms such as ‘‘hindsight is 20/20.’’ When judging past deci- sions made under uncertainty, people will often rely on the outcome without appreciating that the outcome could not have been known at the time of the decision. Finally, people think about others using their own perspective. This leads people to exaggerate the extent to which others share their beliefs, knowledge, and opinions. It also causes communication difﬁcul- ties when speakers mistakenly assume that a listener shares one’s knowledge when, in fact, they do not. Importance for Education Given the interpersonal nature of education, educators are at particular risk of many of the biases associated with the egocentric perception of other people. At least three potential difﬁculties can be identiﬁed, including motivating students, preparing lessons, and delivering information. The tendency to exaggerate the extent to which others share one’s beliefs and values, what psycholo- gists call the false consensus effect , can make it difﬁ- cult for educators to understand what will motivate their students. A teacher who imputes his own Egocentrism 327 preferences and values to students may be trying to motivate them with the wrong incentives. An inherent difﬁculty for educators, who know the material they are trying to present, is to get beyond their own perspective to appreciate the perspective of students who do not know the material. Insufﬁcient correction can cause teachers to overestimate how easy it is for students to learn the material and to overestimate the extent to which information has been clearly communicated—a problem psychologists call the ‘‘curse of knowledge.’’ A math instructor writing a proof on the board might skip a number of steps because she assumes knowledge of algebra beyond the students’ understanding. This can lead to confused students and a frustrated instructor. Finally, effective communication requires instruc- tors to be precise in language and clear in intentions to avoid ambiguities in the ﬁrst place and to engage in perspective taking to resolve ambiguities that do arise. Psychologists have not yet uncovered a commu- nication panacea, but a general awareness of potential pitfalls should be a valuable step toward more effec- tive communication. Given that people necessarily reason about the world from their own perspective, it is difﬁcult to over- come egocentrism. A primary challenge for those in educational practice and research is to recognize the implications of this processing orientation, to diagnose it when it occurs, and to implement practices that help to overcome or circumvent negative consequences. Benjamin A. Converse and Nicholas Epley See also Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development; Theory of Mind Further Readings Nickerson, R. S. (1999). How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one’s own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 737–759. Royzman, E. B., Cassidy, K. W., & Baron, J. (2003). I know, you know: Epistemic egocentrism in children and adults. Review of General Psychology , 7 , 38–65. E MOTIONAL D EVELOPMENT Emotional development refers to the process of learn- ing to effectively express, regulate, and cope with one’s emotions over time. Emotional development has signiﬁcant implications for children’s current and future functioning. Children who successfully navi- gate their emotional world are more likely to also be successful in their interpersonal relationships, aca- demic and later employment endeavors, and in obtain- ing personal happiness and good adjustment. Children who encounter problems with their emotional devel- opment, on the other hand, are signiﬁcantly more likely to have interpersonal difﬁculties, academic and later employment problems, and mental health or adjustment problems. This entry will ﬁrst describe the important elements of emotional development: emo- tion reactivity, emotion regulation, emotionality, and emotional understanding. Next, an overview of the main inﬂuences on emotional development will be presented, including the child’s own characteristics, interactions with parents, and exposure to broader family interactions. Finally, a discussion of how early emotional development is linked to future adjustment will follow. Elements of Emotional Development Emotional Reactivity and Expression Emotional reactivit y refers to an individual’s response to a stimulus change, or an alteration in the environment, which is reﬂected in physiological changes in the individual and is observed in the excit- ability or arousability of response systems, in terms of temporal features (e.g., how quickly the behaviors appear following the stimulus, how rapidly they esca- late, how long they last, and how quickly or slowly they go away) and intensity features (e.g., how strongly the behaviors are expressed, how sensitive they are to stimuli). High emotional reactivity would be reﬂected in a child who begins crying and yelling vigorously at the ﬁrst hint of a disagreement occurring between his or her parents, gets overaroused quickly, and remains so for an hour after the disagreement. Early in infancy, basic emotions such as anger, sadness, and happiness begin to emerge. As children leave the toddler phase and enter preschool and grade school age periods, their emotional expression becomes more context dependent. For example, anger and happiness are expressed more than sadness and distress in peer settings. Furthermore, their emotional expressions become more complex over time, and they may begin to show blends of various emotions 328 Emotional Development and other secondary emotions, such as pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. These later-developing emotions reﬂect more self-consciousness and aware- ness and develop, not coincidentally, at the same time that children are beginning to have a sense of self and to be able to discriminate, compare, and appraise the self in relation to others. Emotional Regulation The second basic process involved in emotional development is emotional regulation,whichisdeﬁned as the ability to modulate, control, or reduce the inten- sive and temporal features of an emotion. Regulation can occur at the neurophysiol ogical, hormonal, atten- tional, and behavioral levels. Behaviorally, it is observed through approach or avoidance and inhibition responses. It is reﬂected in the ability to effectively maintain, enhance, or inhibit emotions appropriately. The term coping is sometimes used interchangeably with emotion regulation, as effective coping is insepara- ble from effective emotion regulation and vice versa. As infants and toddlers, children require parental help in regulating their emotions, but as they grow older, they begin to develop their own strategies for reg- ulation. Regulation strategi es that children typically use, in order from most adaptive to least adaptive are prob- lem solving (attempting to c hange the situation), sup- port seeking from caregivers or peers (either for seeking solace or help), dista ncing-avoidance or distrac- tion, self-calming be haviors (e.g., taking deep breaths), internalizing (e.g., keeping feelings to self), and exter- nalizing or antisocial behaviors (e.g., hitting others or picking a ﬁght). Using more adaptive strategies, such as seeking solace from others or self-calming strategies, is associated with more positiv e outcomes for children, such as greater self-worth. Although some children attempt externalizing or an tisocial behaviors as means of emotion regulation, in fact those behaviors may actually reﬂect a lack of ma naging one’s emotions. Although there is not a syste matic empirical literature indicating what coping strategies emerge at what age, it is known that (a) as children age, they can generate more coping alternatives, and (b) older children are bet- ter able to utilize cognitively oriented coping strategies for situations in which they have no control. Emotionality The third basic process involved in emotional development is emotionality , which refers to an individual’s predisposition toward more negative ver- sus more positive emotions and reactions. Children with more negative emotionality are prone to more feelings of sadness, anxiety, and anger, whereas chil- dren with more positive emotionality may have a greater propensity for happiness and resilience. Emotional reactivity, emotional regulation, and emotionality all interact t ogether and the various com- binations resulting from dif ferent levels of each of the three dimensions yield numerous possibilities for out- comes. Simply being high in negative emotionality may not necessarily result in negative outcomes for a child because the child may also be quite low in emotional reactivity (i.e., the child is more prone to negative feelings, but these negative feelings are not easily invoked), or the child may also be high in emo- tional reactivity but be quite effective in emotion regu- lation (i.e., the child is prone to more negative feelings and such emotions are quickly evoked and strongly expressed, but the child is able to just as quickly regu- late his or her negative em otions and return to base- line). Alternatively, a child may be high in emotional reactivity and low in emotional regulation but have more tendencies toward po sitive emotionality, and thus, it is not problematic that he or she reacts quickly and vigorously and is not an efﬁcient regulator because the highly positive emotions are not problem- atic or requiring regulation. Thus, emotional reactivity, emotional regulation, and emotionality may interact together to serve as either protective factors against emotional problems and disorders later in life or may serve as potential risk factors. Furthermore, emotional reactivity, emotional regul ation, and emotionality are each thought to be inﬂuenced by both innate character- istics of the child and by social relationships, particu- larly parent–child relationships early in life. Emotional Understanding As children develop, they become more sophisti- cated in their emotional understanding. Young chil- dren not only show an awareness of their own emotional states, but they also become more adept at evaluating and appropriately responding to others’ emotions. They also become increasingly better able to describe the causes and consequences of various emotions as they grow and become increasingly knowledgeable about emotional display rules (i.e., social customs for when, how, and to whom certain emotions are appropriate to express). Emotional Development 329 Children learn a great deal about emotional under- standing through their own experiences of various emotions and the concurrent discussions that ensue about their emotional states. Parents are more likely to talk about feelings with their children during times when their children are experiencing distress or anger, and children, in turn, are more likely to engage in casual conversations about feelings when they are mildly upset. These casual conversations are impor- tant sources of learning for children and result in greater levels of emotional understanding later in life. Influences on Emotional Development Child Characteristics: Temperament Temperament plays a fundamental role in current conceptualizations of emotional development and is one of the main contributors to children’s emo- tional reactivity, emotional regulation, and emotional- ity. Temperament is typically deﬁned as a set of inherited personality traits that are observable from the beginning of life. It refers to the child’s organized style of behavior that appears early in development, such as fussiness or fearfulness, and shapes the child’s approach to his or her environment and the environment, in turn, helps further shape the child’s approach. Many different researchers have put forth different opinions regarding the various constructs that constitute temperament, including a broad range of individual characteristics, such as activity, sociabil- ity, impulsivity, mood, approach-withdrawal, inten- sity, threshold, rhythmicity, distractibility, attention span, persistence, and adaptability. Despite these dif- ferences, the dimensions that are consistent across deﬁnitions are those pertaining to emotions. Thus, temperamental differences in infants and children may be reﬂected in consistent individual differences in the amount and severity of expressed negative or positive affect, fearfulness, irritability, ease of being soothed, and withdrawal from, or attraction to, novel situations across a variety of contexts. In their key longitudinal study on temperament, Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas describe four types of temperaments that children can be classiﬁed into: easy, difﬁcult, slow-to-warm-up, and normal/ moderate. The easy category represents about 40 % of children and is characterized by children who are approachable, are adaptive to the environment, possess the ability to regulate basic functions (e.g., eating, sleeping, and elimination) relatively smoothly, display predominantly positive emotionality, and settle easily into new routines. The difﬁcult category represents about 10 % of children and is characterized by children who are predominantly negative or intense in mood, not very adaptable, and arrhythmic with regard to basic functions. Children with a difﬁcult temperament may show distress when faced with new or challenging situations and/or may have a general distress proneness or irritability, especially when limitations are placed on them. These infants cry frequently in spite of their needs being met, seem to show no regular pattern for when they eat or sleep, and are difﬁcult to soothe. The slow-to-warm-up category represents approxi- mately 15 % of children and is characterized by fearful- ness or inhibition. These children are cautious in their approach to new or challenging situations. They are more variable in regulation and adaptability and may show distress or negativity toward some situations. They ﬁt their namesake: They are slow to warm up to situa- tions and people, but they do eventually adapt with effort. Finally, about 35 % of children fall into the normal/moderate category, which is characterized by more typical babies, that is, ones who are more moderate and fall in between categories. They are not as easy as easy babies, but not as difﬁcult as difﬁcult babies. They may display some negativity, but not as consistently as those with difﬁcult temperaments. They also may dis- play some inhibition, similar to the babies in the slow- to-warm-up category, but again not as consistently. They also have more regularity to their biorhythms than those in the slow-to-warm-up or difﬁcult categories. Similar to these concepts of temperament, Jerome Kagan also described two temperament categories in children that represent extremes of behavior: inhibited versus uninhibited children. Inhibited children are characterized by shy, restrained behavior and fearful- ness, whereas uninhibited children are characterized by sociable, bold, and approaching behaviors. Kagan views temperament traits as being based on qualita- tive and innate differences. The key question of interest with regard to emo- tional development is what are the links between tem- perament and later risk for emotional problems or psychopathology? Numerous researchers have investi- gated this question and have found support for moder- ate links. In particular, having high emotionality as an infant has been linked to anxiety, depression, and attention problems in middle school. Falling in the 330 Emotional Development inhibited category as an infant is associated with dis- plays of shyness and withdrawal in middle childhood, more social withdrawal in adolescence, and more dependence and introversion in adulthood. Falling in the uninhibited category as an infant, on the other hand, predicts more externalizing problems and increases in aggression later in childhood. However, temperament alone is not the sole risk factor for adjustment problems later on, and not all infants who have more problematic temperaments experience emotional difﬁculties later in life. Regarding developmental outcomes and the risk for psychopathology, temperament itself is not neces- sarily the problem. The key issue is the goodness of ﬁt between the parents and the child’s temperament. Early in life, infants are not able to regulate their own emotions, and thus, it is the parents’ task to help their infant regulate negative emotions and manage the intensity of positive emotions. Parents’ responses to infants’ temperament can help to attenuate or accentu- ate temperamental extremes. For example, if a child is highly reactive and intense and needs more care but the parent is able to effectively meet the child’s needs and helps soothe and regulate the infant’s negative emotionality, then the parent has successfully attenu- ated any potential problems arising from the more dif- ﬁcult temperamental behaviors. On the other hand, parents who do not successfully help their child in appropriate emotion expression and regulation, or even exacerbate it due to their own negative reactions to the child’s behavior, may actually increase the risk of problems for their child. Thus, how parents interact with their child’s temperament and the goodness of ﬁt between the child’s temperament and the parents’ reactions are what matter most. Relational Influences The family is clearly the most important relational inﬂuence on children’s emotionality and emotional development. Traditional research has typically focused on the importance of the parent–child relationship for children’s emotional functio ning. Although the parent- child relationship is the most signiﬁcant single category of family inﬂuence on child development, other family relationships must also be considered to obtain a more comprehensive account of family inﬂuence on chil- dren’s emotional development. Emerging research over the past two decades has highlighted the importance of also considering inﬂuences of the marital relationship on children’s emotional development. Although other factors (e.g., peers, schools , culture) also undoubtedly affect children’s emotional development, a consider- ation of these additional inﬂuences is beyond the scope of this entry. Parent – Child Relationship Children have some of their ﬁrst experiences with internal affective states, including anger, fear, and happiness, in the context of their relationships with their parents. Furthermore, the quality and intensity of children’s emotional experiences are affected by the quality of their relationships with their parents. Par- ents may be highly inﬂuential in young children’s reg- ulation of their own affect. For example, in parents with their own emotional difﬁculties, such as depres- sion or anxiety, repeated experiences with enduring intense negative emotion can be particularly challeng- ing for young children as they attempt to regulate their own emotions. Dimensions of parenting pertain- ing to emotionality (e.g., acceptance, emotional avail- ability, sensitivity, and attachment) have been found to have substantial implications for children’s emotional development. Greater acceptance and responsiveness to children’s needs by parents is strongly predictive of greater sociability, self-regulation, and prosocial behav- ior in children, whereas parental behaviors that are more indicative of a lack o f responsiveness and avail- ability are linked with poorer outcomes in children, such as increased aggressiveness and social withdrawal. The effects of parental behavior on children’s emo- tional adjustment are more than a matter of just the behaviors that parents direct toward their children or even the emotional intensity of parent–child interac- tions or parenting. Rather, they reﬂect the underlying emotional quality of the relationship between parents and their children. Thus, the ways parents and children interact together are inﬂuenced by the emotional bond or attachment that has formed between the parent and child. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth contend that infants’ patterns of interactions with their parents develop into patterns of attachment style. In infancy and early childhood, attachment security is assessed based on Ainsworth’s Strange Situation task, which consists of a sequence of brief contexts for observing the children’s functioning in relation to the parent’s presence, absence, and return. Children’s attachment securities are classiﬁed to distinguish parent–child Emotional Development 331 relationships in terms of the child’s effectiveness in deriving security from the parent in these various con- texts, as well as the parent’s effectiveness in provid- ing security. Parents who are sensitive, r esponsive, and consistent in meeting their infants’ needs over time are more likely to have infants who develop a secure emotional attachment. Children with secure attachments are able to optimally use their parents as a secure base and as support in the context of the attachment relationship. Thus, the child demonstrates a coherent strategy for using the parent as a source of security. For example, after the parent returns from the separation, the child seeks to reconnect with the parent and is able to recover easily from any emotional dis tress caused by the sepa- ration, returning to happily playing. Children who have a secure attachment feel conﬁdent that their parents are there for them when they need them and are able to successfully reach their parents in times of physical, social, emotional, or other needs and be comforted. When parents are unable to consistently meet their infants’ needs, then an insecure emotional attachment is more likely to develop. Children who are not securely attached may not feel safe or comfortable seeking help from their parents because they have not successfully had their needs met in the past. Instead, they may try to hide their emotions or needs. This is typical with children with avoidant attachments. Upon the parents’ return, avoidantly attached children con- spicuously avoid proximity or contact with their par- ents, and they are not responsive to parental attempts at interaction (e.g., they may look away, turn away, and fail to proactively initiate interaction). They are more fussy and distressed during the separation and yet have more difﬁculty in arousal control upon reunion. Parents of avoidantly attached children are more tense, irritable, and avoidant of close physical contact and overstimulation, thus fostering less conﬁ- dence in their children about the parents as reliable sources of comfort and security. Children can also demonstrate anxious or resistant insecurity in their attachment relationships with their parents. They too are unable to effectively use their parents as a source of security in times of stress, and their strategies reﬂect extreme dependence. Anxious or resistant children are more clingy initially, and when insecurely attached children do attempt to seek out their parents for help, they mix anger (e.g., strug- gling while being held, holding their bodies rigidly, hitting, or pushing away) with excessive contact and proximity seeking. They are not comforted by their parents’ attempts at consoling and have considerable difﬁculty settling down and returning to a more regu- lated state. Bowlby and Ainsworth argue that these early attach- ment patterns form the basis for all other relationships that children will develop. Children use their early attachment relationships and emotional experiences with their parents as the interpretative lenses through which to view, interpret, and respond to all other rela- tionships and interactions. In other words, they develop internal representations or schemas about how relation- ships work based on their relationships with their parents. Levels of parent–child attachment security provide a global sense of emotional security that inﬂu- ences children in many broad domains. Furthermore, children who have successfully had their emotional needs met early on are better at regulating their own emotions as they develop and thus have more success in modulating their outward expressions of emotions, such as their behavior and other communication, because they can better modulate their internal states. Marital Relationship The parents’ marital relationship is another key factor contributing to children’s emotional develop- ment. The quality of the marital relationship and the ways marital conﬂict are handled set the emotional climate for the family and the child. Marital conﬂict has both positive and negative elements however, and depending upon how it is handled, it can have either positive or negative effects on children’s emotional development. Heightened levels of negative conﬂict can inﬂuence children directly and indirectly. Increased conﬂict can directly inﬂuence children, leaving them feeling vulnerable and emotionally insecure about the stability of their family. E. Mark Cummings and Patrick Davies proposed an emotional security hypothesis, which extends the ideas from attachment theory and suggests that children can develop a sense of emotional security not just to the parent–child relationship but also to the marital rela- tionship. From their hypothesis, children react to the meaning of conﬂict itself, rather than just the presence of conﬂict, and the more they are exposed to it, the more sensitized they become to it over time. Witnes- sing more negative hostile and threatening forms of conﬂict is particularly detrimental to children’s sense of security about the marital relationship, whereas 332 Emotional Development more positive expressions including humor, support, and affection promote greater feelings of security. Children as young as 10 months of age respond to marital conﬂict with distress and act markedly differ- ent to conﬂict than to marital harmony. Children’s reactions to expressions of anger and affection in the home change over time. In middle childhood, com- pared with toddlerhood, children are less likely to express their emotions overtly (e.g., by yelling, cry- ing, laughing) during angry interparental exchanges. As children develop, they are also increasingly more likely to intervene in marital conﬂict scenarios. Increased marital conﬂict can also inﬂuence chil- dren indirectly, through negative changes in parent- ing. Marital conﬂict is associated with inconsistent child rearing and disciplinary problems, increased parental negativity, intrusive control, and low levels of parental warmth and responsiveness. Conﬂict in the marital relationship may translate directly into angry interactions with children or may drain parents of the energy and emotional resources necessary to effectively parent their children. The negative effects of conﬂict on the parent–child relationship and children’s emotional development are well established. Increases in marital conﬂict during infancy are predictive of insecure parent–child attach- ment. Children’s relationships with their parents may also change because of the negative effects on their sense of trust or positive regard for their parents caused by watching them behave in mean or hostile ways toward each other. Normal and Abnormal Emotional Development Early generations of research on atypical emotional development documented correlations between child- hood factors and later developmental outcomes. For example, describing correla tions between high levels of marital conﬂict or negative parenting and child depression or aggressi on. A second generation of research is moving beyond m ere correlations and seek- ing to understand the processes underlying children’s emotional development. This is exempliﬁed in the ﬁeld of developmental psychopathology, which has under- scored the importance of understanding the processes underlying normal and abnormal development. The developmental psychopathology approach calls attention to the importance of understanding the multiplicity of individual, biological, social, familial, and other processes underlying the development of childhood problems. For example, multiple emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological processes have been implicated as mediators between marital conﬂict and children’s adjustment. The developmental psychopathology approach seeks to study children over time to provide an understanding of the develop- mental processes and pathways that precede and account for the development of clinical disorders in children. The developmental psychopathology approach also advocates simultaneously examining both abnormal and normal development and risk and resilience to provide a more accurate, appropriately complex and comprehensive picture of the processes that account for the risk and emergence of psychopa- thology in children. Psychopathology is viewed as reﬂecting deviations from normative patterns over time. Inherent in this concept are the notions of multi- ﬁnality , in which the same pathways lead to different outcomes, and equiﬁnality , in which more than one pathway leads to the same outcome. The approach assumes that change is possible at any point along the pathway toward abnormality or normality, although change is constrained by prior adaptation. Further- more, emphasis is placed on the signiﬁcance of con- text for understanding developmental patterns: What ma

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y be dysfunctional or harmful in one context may be adaptive in another. The developmental psychopathology approach is particularly adept in understanding why some children who experience negative environmental circumstances growing up (e.g., high marital conﬂict, poor parenting) develop emotional difﬁculties, whereas others do not. For example, in examining children of depressed par- ents, the pertinence of such an approach is highlighted. Children of depressed parents are at heightened risk for a full range of adjustment problems, including emotional difﬁculties such as sadness, depression, and anxiety. However, not all children with depressed par- ents develop problems, and not all children develop problems at the same point in their development. This provides evidence that other environmental factors must be considered. The developmental psychopathol- ogy approach leads researchers to examine a multiplic- ity of factors at multiple levels to understand the processes that modify children’s adjustment. For exam- ple, children may be affected by parental depression through direct exposure, altered parent–child interac- tions and attachment, and increased marital conﬂict and family discord. Emotional Development 333 Thus, it is evident there is a need for a complex ﬂexible theoretical model that can incorporate these diverse ﬁndings and yield a viable explanation of the multiple potential pathways of development. It is not as simple as just a genetic predisposition causing emotional problems, and it is not just the presence or absence of certain factors that can lead to normal or abnormal emotional development; rather, it is the way in which these factors transpire and interact that helps account for children’s adjustment at any given time. Tina D. Du Rocher Schudlich See also Attachment; Family Inﬂuences; Parenting; Parenting Styles; Risk Factors and Development; Social Development Further Readings Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bowlby, J. (1969) Attachment and loss: Vol 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books. Buss, A. H., & Plomin, R. (1984). Temperament: Early developing personality traits. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (1994). Children and marital conﬂict: The impact of family dispute and resolution. New York: Guilford Press. Cummings, E. M., Davies, P. T., & Campbell, S. B. (2000). Developmental psychopathology and family processes: Theory, research, and clinical implications. New York: Guilford Press. Fox, N. A. (1994). The development of emotion regulation: Biological and behavioral considerations. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development , 59 (2–3, Serial No. 240), 243–246. Kopp, C. B. (1989). Regulation of distress and negative emotions: A developmental view. Developmental Psychology , 25 , 343–354. E MOTIONAL I NTELLIGENCE Presently there is no one deﬁnition of emotional intel- ligence (EI) that is universally accepted. Psychologists have approached EI from different vantage points. Some researchers see it as the interplay of cognitive ability with emotional knowledge and regulation and have utilized self-report measures to assess the con- struct (e.g., Reuven Bar-On, Daniel Goleman). Other researchers have viewed EI as a distinct intelligence and have measured it in the same way as traditional IQ (e.g., John Mayer, Peter Salovey, and David Caruso). EI is a term that has been deﬁned and revised by theorists and researchers in the ﬁeld of psychology. A useful deﬁnition has been proposed by Mayer and Salovey, who have noted that EI is the ability to perceive accurately; appraise and express emotions; access and/or generate feelings when facili- tating thought; understand emotions and emotional knowledge; and regulate feelings to promote cognitive and emotional growth. EI is most relevant because it can be a powerful predictor of how successful a person can be in life, and it has been postulated that if children are appro- priately taught, EI can be increased. In this entry, deﬁ- nitions of EI will be presented, ways of measuring the construct will be explained, and signiﬁcant research ﬁndings will be discussed. At Stanford University in the 1960s, a researcher made the following proposition to 4-year-old children. ‘‘I have to do an errand; if you can wait until I come back, you can have two marshmallows for a treat. If you cannot wait, you can have only one. But you can have it right now.’’ Then the researcher left. Following his departure, some children grabbed the marshmallow as soon as he walked out the door. Others lasted for a few minutes, but eventually the temptation was too much. Those with emotional self- control were determined to wait. These youngsters cov- ered their eyes, or put their heads down. Others turned around in their chairs or distracted themselves by play- ing games or singing. Eventually the experimenter returned and gave the patient children their extra treat. Twelve to 14 years later, these children were evalu- ated as teenagers. Those 4-year-olds who were able to resist temptation were now, as adolescents, viewed by their parents as more socially competent, personally effective, self-assertive, and better able to cope with the frustrations of life. They tended to be more conﬁ- dent, trustworthy, and dependable. They were better at taking initiative and developing projects. And, they were still better able to delay gratiﬁcation to pursue their goals. In addition, those children who, at age 4, waited for the researcher to return had dramatically higher SAT scores as high school seniors. The third of children who grabbed at the marshmallow as preschoo- lers had an average verbal score of 524 and a quantita- tive score of 528. The third who waited the longest had average SAT scores of 610 (verbal) and 652 334 Emotional Intelligence (quantitative)—a 210 difference in total score. This study, conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel, demonstrates both the short-term and future advantage of restraining emotions and delaying impulses. This is the essence of emotional self-regulation—one domain of emotional intelligence. Individuals who are better at emotional self-regulation are more primed for success— whether it is pursuing a career, building a business, or establishing relationships. What Is Emotional Intelligence? The term emotional intelligence entered the American lexicon in 1995 when Daniel Goleman published his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. It became a bigger buzzword, when Nancy Gibbs wrote an October 2, 1995, Time magazine cover story, titled ‘‘The EQ Factor.’’ Her emphasis was that new brain research suggested that emotions, not IQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence. Though Goleman received the most attention for his groundbreaking work, Peter Salovey and John Mayer originally used the term emotional intelligence in 1990 and later reﬁned their deﬁnition in 1997. From their theoretical perspective, EI refers speciﬁ- cally to the cooperative combination of intelligence and emotion. The authors label their model as a four- branch ability model and divide the abilities and skills of EI into four areas: the abilities to (1) perceive emo- tions, (2) use emotions to facilitate thought, (3) under- stand emotions, and (4) manage emotions. Branch 1 reﬂects the perception of emotions and involves the capacity to recognize emotions in another person’s facial and postural expressions. Branch 2, facilitation, involves the capacity of emotions to assist thinking. Branch 3, the understanding of emotion, reﬂects the capacity to analyze emotions, appreciate their probable trends over time, and understand their outcomes. Branch 4 reﬂects the management of emo- tions, which involves the rest of personality. Emotions are managed in the context of the individual’s goals, self-knowledge, and social awareness. A second deﬁnition of EI was postulated by Gole- man based on the work of Salovey. He deﬁned EI as the capacity for recognizing one’s own feelings and those of others, for motivating oneself, and for man- aging emotions well in oneself and in one’s relation- ships. He sees these abilities as distinct from, but complementary to, cognitive intelligence traditionally measured by IQ tests. He noted that these two types of intelligence— cognitive and emotional—relate to different areas of the brain. The intellect is based on the workings of the neocortex, the more evolved part of the brain. The emotional centers are in the more primitive subcortex. EI involves the interplay of the emotional centers in tandem with the intellectual centers. In developing his deﬁnition, Goleman expanded on the work of Howard Gardner, who developed the the- ory of multiple intelligences. Two of these multiple intelligences were persona l in nature: interpersonal intelligence (social skills) an d intrapersonal intelligence (self-knowledge). In 1998, in the text Working With Emotional Intelligence , Goleman modiﬁed his focus in order to understand how these talents work in life. He began to label these as emotional and social competen- cies, which he described as learned capabilities based on emotional intelligence t hat results in outstanding performance at work. These include the following: Self-awareness (knowing one’s internal states, pre- ferences, resources, and intuitions). This is self- awareness or recognizing a feeling as it happens. This is considered to be the keystone of EI. These compe- tencies include emotional awareness, accurate self- assessment, and self-conﬁdence. Self-regulation (managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources). This relates to the ability to soothe oneself; that is, to shake off depression, irri- tation, stress, and anxiety. This is the fundamental skill of emotional self-regulation. He sees these com- petencies as including self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, and innovation. Motivation (emotional tendencies to guide or facili- tate reaching goals). This relates to the ability to self- motivate oneself. These competencies include achieve- ment drive, commitment, initiative, and optimism. Empathy (awareness of other’s feelings, needs, and concerns). These competencies include understanding others, helping others develop, developing a service orientation, leveraging diversity, and maintaining political awareness. Social skills (adeptness at i nducing desirable responses in others). This requires handling emotions in rela- tionships well and accurately reading social situations and networks; interacting smoothly; using these skills to persuade and lead, negotiate, and settle disputes for cooperation and teamwork. These competencies Emotional Intelligence 335 include wielding inﬂuence, communicating effec- tively, managing conﬂict, providing leadership, serv- ing as a change catalyst, building bonds, collaborating and cooperating, and creating team capabilities. The ﬁrst three—self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation—are considered personal competencies; whereas the last two—empathy and social skills—are considered social competencies. The third major contributor to the deﬁnition of the construct of EI is Bar-On. He refers to this construct as emotional-social intelligence (ESI). Bar-On views ESI as a cross section of interrelated emotional and social competencies, skills, and facilitators that deter- mine how effectively one understands and expresses oneself, understands others and relates with them, and copes with daily demands. These include the follow- ing ﬁve components: 1. The ability to recognize, understand, and express emotions and feelings 2. The ability to understand how others feel and relate with them 3. The ability to manage and control emotions 4. The ability to manage change, adapt, and solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature 5. The ability to generate positive affect and be self-motivated How Is Emotional Intelligence Measured? Measurement of EI has involved two major approaches, according to Gerald Matthews, Moshe Zeidner, and Richard Roberts. The ﬁrst measurement approach has aligned with Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso’s model of EI. To be considered a standard intelli- gence, Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso suggest that EI must (a) be operationalized as a mental ability, (b) meet correlational criteria that indicate it as a uni- tary ability that represents a new kind of perfor- mance relative to earlier measures of intelligence and personality dispositions, © exhibit growth with age, and (d) predict outcomes of importance. These three authors have developed the Mayer- Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), which meets all four criteria. This test has eight tasks: two to measure each of the four branches of EI. The MSCEIT is considered an ability test, similar in nature to a more traditional IQ test. The examinee is asked to do a task and receives a score. For exam- ple, for Branch 1, Perceiving Emotions, in the sub- test Faces, the examinee is asked to identify the emotions in faces. The authors conclude that the MSCEIT is a convenient-to-administer test that is highly reliable at the total score area and branch levels and provides a valid measure of EI. The second measurement approach has utilized self- report measures to operationalize the models of EI pre- sented by Goleman and Bar-On. Several measurements have been developed based on Goleman’s model. One of these is the Emotional Competency Inventory, devel- oped by Richard Boyatzis, Goleman, and Hay/McBer (now the HayGroup), which is a multirater (360-degree) instrument that provides self, manager, direct report, and peer ratings on a series of behavioral indicators of EI. It measures 20 competencies, and the rater is asked to describe him- or herself or the other person on a scale from 1 (the behavior is only slightly characteristic of the person) to 7 (the behavior is very characteristic of the person) for each item. These items are then com- posed into ratings for each of the competencies. Bar-On developed a self-report measure of emo- tionally and socially intelligent behavior called the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i). It was the ﬁrst measure on this construct published by a psychological test publisher, the ﬁrst to be peer reviewed, and the most widely used measure of its kind. It contains 133 items in the form of short sentences and employs a 5-point response scale. It has ﬁve composite scales and 15 subscales. The composite scales are (1) intra- personal, (2) interpersonal, (3) stress management, (4) adaptability, and (5) general mood. What Are the Significant Research Findings? Views of EI differ according to the purpose of the researchers (e.g., studying EI as a standard intelli- gence or as the capacity for processing and regulating emotions). Consequently, there is no consensus deﬁni- tion of EI. A more precise deﬁnition should be expected to emerge as researchers test the assump- tions behind the different models of EI. Notably, more research is needed to delineate EI from constructs such as temperament and personality. Programmatic research by Mayer, Caruso, Salovey, and colleagues is beginning to delineate how EI converges and diverges from standard intelligence. 336 Emotional Intelligence Research utilizing Mayer , Salovey, and Caruso’s model suggests that there is a mild to medium overlap between general EI and verbal intelligence (i.e., crystallized intelligence). In contrast, results of a meta- analysis of 10 studies suggest that no more than 4 % of the variance of the EQ-i can be explained by cognitive intelligence. This suggests t hat ESI and cognitive intel- ligence are not strongly related and are most likely separate constructs. In addi tion, there is neurological evidence suggesting that neural centers governing ESI and those regulating cognitive intelligence are located in different areas of the brain. Speciﬁcally, it has been hypothesized that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to be related to basic dimensions of ESI, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thought to govern signiﬁcant aspects of cognitive intelligence. No differences have been revealed between males and females regarding overall ESI. However, there are a few statistically signiﬁcant though small differ- ences between the sexes for a few of the factors. Females appear to have stronger interpersonal skills than males, but males have a higher intrapersonal capacity, are better at managing emotions, and are more adaptable. The Bar-On model reveals that women are more aware of emotions, relate better interpersonally, demonstrate more empathy, and are considered more socially responsible than men. In contrast, men appear to be more self-reliant, cope bet- ter with stress, be more ﬂexible, solve problems bet- ter, be more optimistic, and have better self-regard. In terms of age, results from the EQ-i revealed that older groups scored signiﬁcantly higher than the youn- ger groups on most scales, and individuals in their late 40s have obtained the highest mean scores. The results seem to suggest that as a people get older, they become more socially and emotionally intelligent. Current research has been exploring the relation- ships between EI, behavior, and performance (e.g., school grades, self-actualization, stress management, wellness, leadership, and occupational performance). Some noteworthy studies are highlighted here. In a path analysis study, James Parker and colleagues found that there was a .41 correlation between ESI and scholastic performance among high school stu- dents, indicating a moderate statistically signiﬁcant correlation. Results seem to indicate that at least 17 % of academic performance is a function of ESI in addi- tion to cognitive intelligence. A series of studies using large samples from the Netherlands, Israel, and North America evaluated the relationship between self-actualization and EI. Results indicated that emotional-social intelligence more so than cognitive intelligence inﬂuences one’s ability to do one’s best. Bar-On notes that a high IQ does not guarantee that one will actualize their potential, but a high EQ, more so than a high IQ, gives a person a better chance. This bolsters the notion that adults who eventually reach their goals are those who, as children, had the self-discipline to wait for the extra marshmallow. Conclusion Emotional life requires a unique set of competencies and as surely as any academic or cognitive domain can be managed with lesser or greater skill. As noted by Goleman, how adept a person is at EI is necessary to understanding why one person excels in life while another with equal cognitive skills falls short. Emo- tional aptitude may be conceptualized as a meta- ability that determines how well a person uses their raw intellect to navigate the rivers and shoals of life. Philip J. Lazarus and Nick Benson See also Crystallized Intelligence; Fluid Intelligence; Intelligence and Intellectual Development; Intelligence Quotient (IQ); Intelligence Tests Further Readings Bar-On, R. (1997). The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i): A test of emotional intelligence. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Multi-Health Systems. Bar-On, R. (2000). Emotional and social intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i). In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), Handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 363–388). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bar-On, R. (2006). The Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI). Psicothema , 18 (Suppl.), 13–25. Boyatzis, R. E., Goleman, D., & HayGroup. (2001). The Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI). Boston: HayGroup. Brackett, M. A., & Salovey, P. (2004). Measuring emotional intelligence with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). In Glenn Geher (Ed.), Measuring emotional intelligence: Common ground and controversy (pp. 181–196). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science. Gibbs, N. (1995, October 2). The EQ factor. Time , 60–68. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Emotional Intelligence 337 Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Matthew, G., Zeidner, M., & Roberts, R. D. (2002). Emotional intelligence: Science and myth. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Implications for educators (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books. Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002). Mayer- Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Multi-Health Systems. Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2004). Emotional intelligence: Theory, ﬁndings and implications. Psychological Inquiry , 15 , 197–215. Parker, J. D. A., Creque, R. E., Barnhart, D. L., Harris, J. I., Majeski, S. A., Wood, L., et al. (2004). Academic achievement in high school: Does emotional intelligence matter? Personality and Individual Differences , 37 , 1321–1330. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality , 9 , 185–211. Stys, Y., & Brown, S. L. (2004). A review of the emotional intelligence literature and implications for corrections. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Correctional Service of Canada, Research Branch. E MOTION AND M EMORY People’s memories of past events possess different qualitative characteristics, including overall vividness. Certain events are recalled with high clarity and a great degree of detail, whereas other events are barely remembered. Research on the effects of emotion on memory has shown that emotion can play an important role in determining such differences in recall. Positive, negative, and neutral emotions can inﬂuence whether an event or information will be richly and vividly recollected. Investigations of emotion and memory have included studies of emotion and general autobio- graphical memories, eyewitness testimony, ﬂashbulb memories, and memories for traumatic events. This entry examines each of these topics. Emotion and General Autobiographical Memories Events that are pleasant are often processed at a deeper level and, thus, recalled more accurately and faster than events that are unpleasant. Due to more vivid imagery associated with pleasant items, memory for positive information is more accessible, durable, and frequent than is memory for negative information. Margaret Matlin proposed that this phenomenon is part of the Pollyanna Principle. Another aspect of the Pollyanna Principle is the fading affect bias ,which states that unpleasant memories fade faster than pleas- ant memories, because the emotion associated with unpleasant events weakens in intensity more than the emotion associated with pleasant events. Thus, over- all, people have the tendency to focus on positive life experiences and are motivated to view their life events as relatively pleasant. However, the Pollyanna Principle does not seem to apply to people with depressive tendencies. Indivi- duals who are depressed tend to focus on negative events, and as a result, unpleasant emotions do not fade more quickly than pleasant emotions. With a pro- found sense of hopelessness, depressed individuals’ autobiographical memories are biased toward unplea- santness. These individuals often recall mood-congruent material; that is, they have the tendency to recall more negative than positive material because nega- tive material is congruent with their current mood. Depression is linked to less speciﬁc retrieval of posi- tive memories. For example, investigations of patients who have recently attempted suicide reveal that their recent autobiographical memories consist of mostly negative episodes. Furthermore, there is a delay in these patients’ ability to retrieve positive memories. Individuals who are at risk for depressive moods possess automatic negative and depressive biases, while also attempting to suppress their nega- tive tendencies to inhibit the inﬂuence of depressive biases. As a result of this conﬂict, they often become relatively uncertain about the meaning of ambiguous information, and their memory for such information is tainted. Emotion and Eyewitness Testimony Individuals who experience a history of negative or traumatic events, such as a history of sexual or physi- cal abuse, have reduced memory speciﬁcity. As a reg- ulating strategy, these individuals routinely retrieve autobiographical memories in a less speciﬁc way to avoid being confronted with past painful memories. This strategy may be perceived as advantageous and protective in the short term. However, as Dirk Her- mans and his colleagues suggested, in the long term, a cognitive avoidance strategy may turn out to be 338 Emotion and Memory maladaptive, due to using an avoidant coping style to deal with feelings, thoughts, and problems. Overall, about one in three people who have experi- enced a traumatic event report having memory difﬁcul- ties retrieving details about the event, probably because they were so emotionally distracted that the normal memory encoding processes were interrupted at the time the event occurred. Researchers in the area of eye- witness testimony have indicated that similar to other types of traumatic events, witnessing a crime involves intense emotion, and such experience is capable of dis- rupting memory encoding and recall. The strong emo- tions that are elicited in a crime situation tend to draw attention to the central, salient themes of the sequence of the event, and thus, memory for the core elements is facilitated by the experience. On the other hand, peripheral details of the events are often impaired because attention is drawn to critical themes, leaving little capacity to process sp eciﬁc details. The phenome- non is known as the Easterbrook hypothesis,which states that in a traumatic condition, such as a crime situation, high emotional arousal narrows one’s range of focus on the important aspects of the events, and as a result, memory for noncentral, irrelevant details is decreased or even distorted. For example, when a bank robbery was depicted in a ﬁlm in Elizabeth Loftus’ s research, participants who viewed a traumatic version, in which a boy was abruptly shot in the face, later recalled much less detail from the beginning of the ﬁlm (e.g., the number on the boy’s jersey), compared to participants who saw a non- traumatic version of the ﬁlm. This ﬁnding reveals that a high degree of anxiety and emotional intensity will narrow attentional focus, drain available processing resources, and reduce memory ability. Directly related to the Easterbrook hypothesis is the weapon focusing hypothesis. Whenaweaponisusedinacrime,wit- nesses often have clear memories of the weapon involved but hindered memories of other aspects of the crime, including central elements like the criminal’s face. This phenomenon is especially applicable to peo- ple who have a high state of anxiety when seeing a weapon. A heightened sense of anxiety can trigger panic that leads to distorted memory, because different aspects of the event are not well encoded into memory. Emotion and Flashbulb Memories Another intriguing phenomenon in the study of emo- tion and memory was ﬁrst referred to as ﬂashbulb memory by Roger Brown and James Kulik. These investigators proposed that individuals’ memory for a shocking and novel event, like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, often seems to be preserved in a pho- tographic form that contains many circumstantial details that are resistant to forgetting. Brown and Kulik suggested that this type of memory is processed through a special brain mechanism called Now Print, in which the brain’s ﬂashbulb, like the camera’s ﬂash- bulb, freezes the moment when the unusual event occurs, and, consequently, memory for the event is stored with piercing clarity and precise details. How- ever, a key element that determines whether the Now Print mechanism is activated is the consequentiality of the event. A surprising event that has high personal involvement and signiﬁcance is more likely to trigger a ﬂashbulb memory. For instance, according to research ﬁndings, more African Americans than Euro- pean Americans reported possessing ﬂashbulb memo- ries of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Californians showed more ﬂashbulb memories that were accurate and detailed for the 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta (near San Francisco) than Atlanta resi- dents who heard about the event from the news. Other investigators have argued against Brown and Kulik’s view that ﬂashbulb memories are formed through a special brain mechanism, because research has revealed that ﬂashbulb memories are prone to for- getting over time, just like memories for ordinary events. People’s recollections of shocking, highly emotion-driven public events, such as the Challenger explosion, the bombing of Iraq in 1991, and the ver- dict of the O. J. Simpson trial, often contain distor- tions and can be remarkably inaccurate. As time passes, people forget or become confused about the circumstances in which they ﬁrst heard about the event, and, thus, their memories for the event can show substantial degrees of decaying and fading. Nevertheless, false ﬂashbulb memory recollections are often accompanied by high degrees of conﬁdence by individuals. In other words, despite inaccurate recall, individuals tend to be very conﬁdent about their false memories being correct, leading to a mis- match between subjective feelings of conﬁdence and objective accuracy of recollections. Although ﬂashbulb memories can fade and pro- duce reconstructive errors over time, they are some- times more durable and accurately remembered than many memories of ordinary events. These vivid ﬂash- bulb memories are likely to be strengthened through Emotion and Memory 339 repetitive discussion and rehearsal. People talk and think about the surprising event repeatedly for an extended period of time following the event, resulting in an increased memorability for the event. Overall, intense emotion and personal signiﬁcance associated with an event lead to more accurate and vivid remembering of the event because these elements make an event distinc- tive and different from mundane occurrences. Emotion and Memories for Traumatic Events It is a common belief that memory for emotionally traumatic events is accurate, vivid, and detailed. Although it is often true that memory for emotionally laden traumatic events is fairly well preserved, it is not an exception to ﬁnd striking errors and distortions in people’s recollections of past traumatic life events. For example, it has been shown that recollections of children who have been through certain traumatic events, such as being kidnapped at gunpoint or being attacked by a sniper at school, often contain a signiﬁ- cant number of inaccuracies, even though their mem- ories appear to be vivid and full of details. Distortions of traumatic memories can be the result of perceptual errors due to stress experienced during the shocking episode. Seeing a mustache on the attacker’s face when the attacker does not have facial hair is an example of a perceptual error caused by a high level of emotion during the event. Traumatic memories can also change over time and, thus, contain errors because of retrospec- tive biases. Memory of an event can be later recon- structed in a way to ﬁt a person’s current emotional state after some time has passed. For example, people with a reduced level of posttraumatic stress tend to recall an original traumatic event as less threatening than their original recall of the event compared with those with a heightened level of posttraumatic stress. Children are more vulnerable to the inﬂuence of misinformation and more apt to confuse the sources of their knowledge than are adults, resulting in mis- takenly incorporating inaccurate information into their memory or failing to distinguish between an imagined and an actual event. However, inaccurate memories of traumatic events have also been demonstrated in adults who survived some brutally traumatic events like Nazi concentration camps. Thus, even extreme trauma cannot ward off possible memory erosions over time. Similarly, combat ﬂashbacks, often reported by war veterans, can be as visually intense as if the individuals are reliving moments of the actual combat episodes. And yet, under close examination, this type of ﬂashback is often a combination of memories of real events and constructions of imagined events. People who are easily hypnotized and have an inclination to engage in imaginative and fantasy-based activities are most likely to make claims of having ﬂashbacks of trau- matic past experiences. The authenticity and truthful- ness of such ﬂashbacks, however, have been highly questioned by researchers. Further Research Emotion seems to play a major role in how people’s memories are initially constructed and later recon- structed during the retrieval process. High levels of emotion may enhance some aspects of memories while impairing other aspects of recollections. Investi- gators have used various paradigms when studying the effect of emotion on memory. Further research on this topic will continue to shed light on the role that people’s emotional lives play in their autobiographical memories and on the mechanisms by which emotions exact their toll on memory. Lin-Miao L. Agler and Karen M. Zabrucky See also Episodic Memory; Flashbulb Memories, The Nature of; Long-Term Memory; Memory Further Readings Hermans, D., Defranc, A., Raes, F., Williams, J. M. G., & Eelen, P. (2005). Reduced autobiographical memory speciﬁcity as an avoidant coping style. British Journal of Clinical Psychology , 44 , 583–589. Howes, M. B. (2007). Human memory: Structures and images. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schacter, D. L. (1996). Emotional memories: When the past persists. In D. L. Schachter, Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past (pp. 192–217). New York: Basic Books. Schmolck, H., Buffalo, E. A., & Squire, L. R. (2000). Memory distortions develop over time: Recollections of the O. J. Simpson trial verdict after 15 and 32 months. Psychological Science , 11 (1), 39–45. Swales, M. A., Williams, J. M. G., & Wood, P. (2001). Speciﬁcity of autobiographical memory and mood disturbance in adolescents. Cognition and Emotion , 15 (3), 321–331. Walker, W. R., Skowronski, J. J., Gibbons, J. A., Vogl, R. J., & Thompson, C. P. (2003). On the emotions that accompany autobiographical memories: Dysphoria 340 Emotion and Memory disrupts the fading affect bias. Cognition and Emotion , 17 (5), 703–723. Walker, W. R., Skowronski, J. J., Thompson, C. P. (2003). Life is pleasant—and memory helps to keep it that way! Review of General Psychology , 7 (2), 203–210. Williams, J. M. G., & Broadbent, K. (1986). Autobiographical memory in suicide attempters. Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 95 (2), 144–149. E MPATHY The empathic teacher and the empathic student are important topics for consideration by educational psy- chologists. Contemporary approaches to empathy con- ceive of empathy as a social interaction between any two individuals with one individual experiencing the feelings of a second individual. Although there is some degree of correspondence between the affect of the observer and the affect of the observed, the affects are not identical. The process of empathy is currently acknowledged to be contingent on both cognitive and affective factors, the particular inﬂuence varying with the age and other attributes of the individual and with the situational context. The model proposed by Norma Feshbach emphasizes the cognitive ability to discriminate affective states in others, the more mature cognitive ability to assume the perspective and role of another person, and the affective ability to experience emotions in an appropriate manner. Martin Hoffman’s developmental model also has three components—cognitive, affective, and motivational— and focuses on empathic responsiveness to distress in others as the motivation for altruistic behavior. Deﬁnitional concerns, methodological problems, and theoretical controversies have characterized this area of study. Nevertheless, the status of empathy as an important variable meriting consideration and empirical study has dramatically changed during the past 30 years. Its relevance to a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, sociology, politi- cal science, education, medicine, and the arts, has no doubt contributed to the burgeoning interest and activ- ity in the study of empathy. Measurement The task of assessing empathy remains a formidable problem. The multidimensionality of the construct and the internal properties of its components leave a wide hiatus between (a) the critical role afforded to empathy in the individual’s development and social behavior and (b) its data base. Assessment procedures for chil- dren’s empathy vary as a function of stimulus modality (e.g., stories, audiotapes, cartoons, paper-and-pencil questions, slides, and narration), as well as response modality (e.g., reﬂexive crying and self-reports). More recently, measures of physiological arousal, such as heart rate and electrodermal responses, are being used to assess empathy. Adult measures tend to be paper-and-pencil, question- naire-type instruments. Ho wever, recent measurement developments entail the analysis of facial musculature responses to others and neur onal responses, the latter per- taining to so-called mirror neurons that match the neural reactions of another person. Origins The answer to the ontogenetic pattern of empathic development is unresolved. Infant responsiveness to the crying of other infants has been noted in infants as young as 2 weeks. Studies also show that infants youn- ger than 1 year of age can respond differentially to faces depicting different affective states. In the studies by Carolyn Zahn-Waxler and Marian Radke-Yarrow, very young children exhibited ‘‘empathy-like beha- viors.’’ And while there is a close theoretical and empi- rical relationship between empathy and prosocial behaviors, empathy is theoretically distinct from and should not be considered as synonymous with helping, caring, sharing, or any other positive social behavior. Generally, it can be said that a cluster of empathy-related skills appear very early in an individual and become more differentiated and purposeful with age. Indivi- duals, at any age, vary in empathic responsiveness, the source of which may be biologically/temperamentally or situationally/environmentally determined. Antecedents of Empathy The literature relating parent attitudes and child- rearing practices to children’s empathy as well as labo- ratory and ﬁeld training studies indicates that empathy can be taught and that empathy can be learned. How parents rear their children inﬂuences the development of empathic understanding and behavior. Mothers who are responsive, nonpunitive, and nonauthoritarian and who manifest empathic and caring behaviors enhance the development of empathy. Conversely, Empathy 341 parent practices that are negatively related to the development of empathy include use of threats and physical punishment, inconsistency, and reliance on extrinsic rewards. The strength of these parent–child interrelationships is much greater for mothers and their daughters than for fathers with either their sons or daughters, data that are consistent with overall ﬁnd- ings that females are modestly, but consistently, higher in empathy than males. Functions of Empathy Empathy appears to play an important mediating role in a wide range of cognitive, affective, and social behaviors. These may include greater social under- standing, greater emotional competence, heightened compassion and caring, greater regulation of aggres- sion and other antisocial behaviors, and greater proso- cial and moral behaviors. Studies relating empathy to such prosocial behaviors as cooperation, sharing, donating, and other altruistic acts have generally yielded positive ﬁndings, especially in adults, as have studies relating empathy to reduced social prejudice. Because of its multifaceted structure encompassing cognitive and affective dimensions, empathy is linked to other important domains of behavior, such as com- munication and academic achievement. There are a number of studies showing associations between empathic understanding or the training of empathic skill and academic performance; for example, the Bon- ner and Aspy study relating empathetic understanding and grade point averages, the Feshbach and Feshbach training studies, the Feshb ach and Feshbach longitudi- nal study of the relationship of empathy to reading and spelling skills in elementa ry school-age children, and the Kohn program on ‘‘caring school communities.’’ Empathy should be distinguished from emotional intel- ligence, a concept that has received considerable atten- tion in recent years. However, empathy is proposed to be a component of emotional intelligence. Teacher Empathy The salience of empathy to the educational process is especially reﬂected in the extensive literature on teacher empathy that was initially fueled by Halsey Rogers’s approach to the t herapeutic process and human development. For Rogers, empathy entails an understanding of the perspective and feelings of the client. The assumption underlying a focus on teacher empathy is the expectation that empathic communica- tion by the teacher will resu lt in students experienc- ing greater acceptance and in students developing more positive attitudes toward themselves and toward schooling. The thrust of many of the teacher empathy studies has been on instructional techniques for enhancing teacher empathy. Most of the instructional programs entail complex, multimodal methods with varied effects, making it difﬁcult to link teacher empathy to student outcomes. However, a few studies linking teacher empathy to student learning and behavior have found that teacher empathy is related to positive student outcomes. Empathy in the Classroom Today, there are a number of programs that directly or indirectly use empathy as an adjunct tool in teaching children. Earlier efforts with regard to empathy and education focused on enhanc ing empathy in teachers as a component of teacher competence by training them in human relations and soc ial understanding. The focus of more current research is to show the relationship between teacher empathy and student behavior. Future Research Empathy appears to be a signiﬁcant variable in human development and social interaction. Its complexity and internal representation, while challenging, do not preclude consideration and investigation. Promising research developments, such as the discovery of neu- ral correlates, may help resolve some of the ambiguity in the study of empathy. Although more research is required, the process of empathy appears especially germane to the ﬁeld of education, particularly educa- tional psychology. Norma D. Feshbach See also Emotional Development; Emotional Intelligence; Social Development Further Readings Carkhuff, R. R. (1969). Helping in human relations (Vols. 1 & 2). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R., Schaller, M., Carlo, G., & Miller, P. (1991). The relations of parental characteristics and 342 Empathy practices to children’s vicarious emotional responding. Child Development , 62 , 1393–1408. Feshbach, N. D. (1975). Empathy in children: Some theoretical and empirical considerations. Counseling Psychologist , 5 , 25–39. Feshbach, N. D., & Feshbach, S. (1982). Empathy training and the regulation of aggression: Potentialities and limitations. Academic Psychology Bulletin , 4 , 399–413. Feshbach, N. D., & Feshbach, S. (2003). Empathy in education: An elixir but no panacea. International Journal of Psychology , 10 , 2763–2769. Hoffman, M. L. (1982). Developmental prosocial motivation: Empathy and guilt. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), The development of prosocial behavior (pp. 218–231). New York: Academic Press. Kohn, A. (1991). Caring kids: The role of schools. Phi Delta Kappan , 72 , 496–506. Rodman, G. I. (1977). Study of the relationship of teacher empathy for minority persons and inservice relations training. Journal of Educational Research , 70 , 205–210. Upright, R. L. (2002). To tell a tale: The use of moral dilemmas to increase empathy in the elementary school child. Early Childhood Education Journal , 30 , 15–20. Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., & King, R. A. (1979). Child rearing and children’s prosocial initiations toward victims of distress. Child Development , 50 , 319–330. E NGLISH AS A S ECOND L ANGUAGE English as a second language is English for nonnative speakers. Because it involves learning across the life span, it is sometimes considered to be a subﬁeld of educational psychology. English for nonnative speak- ers is referred to by several acronyms: ESL (English as a second language), EFL (English as a foreign lan- guage), EAL (English as an additional language), and ELL (English language learning). There are also related acronyms, such as TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages). The history of ESL instruction and research will be covered in this entry, as will current practices and key issues in the ﬁeld. Introduction English holds preferential status because it is studied as a second or additional language by more people than any other human language; it has become the global lingua franca—the language of commerce, sci- ence, technology, and other professional endeavors. It has been estimated that for every native speaker of English, there are four nonnative speakers who use it as a second or other language. Braj Kachru described three principal contexts in which English is learned: the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle. In inner-circle countries, such as Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the majority of speakers use English in all aspects of their lives. In the outer circle, in countries such as India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, English is important for historical reasons and, in many instances, is an ofﬁcial language, but it is not the mother tongue of many of the citizens. The expanding circle consists of countries where English was not important historically but where it is now widely used as an additional language; for example, Japan. The theory and pedagogy of ESL draw on many disciplines, including linguistics, education, psychol- ogy, anthropology, and sociology. In the past several decades, an amalgam of these areas has developed as applied linguistics, a ﬁeld that encompasses not only language learning and teaching, but translation, lexi- cography, and other applied language issues. Communicative Competence A central concept in ESL is communicative compe- tence , a term ﬁrst coined by Dell Hymes, a linguistic anthropologist. Communicative competence includes the skills and knowledge necessary to successfully convey meaning through language. Applied linguists Michael Canale and Merrill Swain developed a model of communicative competence that describes the com- ponentsoflanguagethatarecrucialtosuccessful communication. These components are grammatical (linguistic), sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence. Grammatical competence refers to the ability to manipulate language forms according to grammatical rules; a person demonstrates grammati- cal competence by using grammatical forms accu- rately, but he or she may not be able to articulate the rules (as is the case for most native speakers). Socio- linguistic competence is demonstrated when an indi- vidual uses language appropriately in different contexts. The status of participants, the purpose of the interaction, and local norms all affect what is consid- ered to be appropriate; for example, one would use different language when speaking to a judge in court than one would when communicating the same message to a close friend. Strategic competence is the ability to use verbal and nonverbal communica- tion strategies to rectify or avoid communication English as a Second Language 343 breakdowns and to enhance communication. Several researchers have developed extensive lists of commu- nication strategies, such as paraphrase, repetition, word coinage, clariﬁcation requests, and so forth. Dis- course competence refers to the ability to link forms and meanings coherently in both written and spoken language. This includes using discourse markers, such as ﬁrst , next , then ,and ﬁnally, to help the listener follow a sequence of events, for example. Several researchers have developed elaborated versions of Canale and Swain’s model, but the same skills and basic concepts are emphasized. Communicative com- petence is the ultimate goal of many ESL learners and teachers. Historical Overview of Teaching English Although the teaching and learning of second lan- guages (L2s) has been a concern of educators for many centuries (e.g., John Amos Comenius wrote about his nouvelle me ´ thode in the 1600s), this over- view will be limited to the past 200 years. The oldest method of language teaching is grammar translation (sometimes called the classical method); this stemmed originally from the teaching of Latin in Europe but spread to other contexts. This method is still used today in some settings to teach English; in China, for example, the impact of the grammar translation method is still felt quite strongly. Grammar translation focuses on the translation of sentences and texts from the ﬁrst language into the L2 and vice versa. In addi- tion, explicit grammatical explanations are provided with examples, along with exercises that focus on each grammatical rule. Vocabulary instruction is based on the text that the students are translating; thus, vocabulary learning does not progress from sim- ple to complex. There is no emphasis on speaking or listening, because the intent is to produce people who can read and write in the new language. An advantage of grammar translation is that it can be undertaken independently, without an instructor, or with an instructor who is not very proﬁcient in the language to be learned. Grammar translation was favored ini- tially by the educated classes; it was viewed not only as a method for learning to read classic works such as Shakespeare but also as a valuable mental exercise. In 1880, Franc¸ois Gouin published a book outlining a new approach to language teaching called the series method . This method was a radical departure from grammar translation, founded on the premise that an L2 should be learned much like the ﬁrst, focusing on everyday spoken language rather than literary texts. Gouin followed the language learning progress of his young nephew and developed the series method based on his observations. No translation is involved (hence, it belongs to a group of methods that are referred to as being ‘‘direct’’); students are taught a series of con- nected sentences accompanied by appropriate actions or behaviors. For instance, to explain how to describe a girl lighting a stove, the students would learn sen- tences such as ‘‘She puts down the wood in front of the stove,’’ ‘‘She crouches down in front of the stove,’’ and ‘‘She opens the door of the stove.’’ Another fea- ture of the series method is the lack of grammatical explanation; students are expected to learn grammar implicitly through exposure in the series of sentences. Finally, the series method emphasized the importance of accurate pronunciation. Around the same time that Gouin produced his method, Charles Berlitz and others introduced other direct methods to teach L2s. In the Berlitz approach, which is still in use today, students are taught in the L2 exclusively, and their lessons are carefully ordered from concrete, simple forms to increasingly more complex and abstract language. In the ﬁrst lessons, students learn some nouns such as pencil , pen, book, chair , and so on—items that are in the immediate environment. They also learn a few questions and answers, such as ‘‘What is this?’’ and ‘‘This is a pen,’’ to help generate additional language. As stu- dents progress, they learn more nouns, adjectives, verbs, and verb tenses. Grammatical points are intro- duced one at a time, in an inductive manner. In the 1920s, there were several advocates of what is known as the reading method. In this case, students’ only goal is to become proﬁcient readers in the L2. It was argued that English learners in India, for example, would beneﬁt more from reading than from any other linguistic skill; furthermo re, reading was thought to be easier to acquire. The reading method makes use of the ﬁrst language for explanations, and there is a heavy emphasis on vocabulary development. The reading method also focuses on the use of graded texts, reading strategies, and rapid reading techniques. This method was the ﬁrst to introduce la nguage instruction for a spe- ciﬁc purpose. In some parts of the world, reading in English is still emphasized more than any other skill because university textbooks and many technical and scientiﬁc materials are oft en available only in English. 344 English as a Second Language A major shift took place in the 1950s with the advent of the audiolingual method. This method drew on both the linguistic and psychological theories of the day: structuralism and behaviorism, respectively. Linguists used contrastive analysis, comparing the ﬁrst language and English, to predict areas of difﬁculty for language learners; this infor- mation was then used to design lessons. A strong reliance on spoken language was a consequence of the linguistic principle that oral language is para- mount and that written language is simply a by- product of speech. Behaviorist concepts of habit formation and reinforcement resulted in a heavy emphasis on repetition, mimicry, and memorization of controlled units of language. A typical audiolin- gual lesson consisted of a dialogue presented to the class by the instructor, using only the L2. The dia- logue was repeated by the students several times in chorus, and then in smaller groups. The emphasis was on speaking accurately, both in terms of gram- mar and pronunciation. Students were given positive feedback for correct productions; errors were avoided by the use of intensive drill. Students were often assigned homework in the language lab where they practiced grammatical patterns. Reading and writing were secondary in importance to the devel- opment of good speaking skills. Because of its sci- entiﬁc reputation, as well as heavy ﬁnancial support from governments and publishers, the audiolingual method became extremely inﬂuential. As a reaction to the behaviorist underpinnings of audiolingualism, the cognitive code approach devel- oped in the late 1960s. The main premise of this approach is the need for the learner to explicitly understand the rules of the language at all levels, rather than simply memorizing dialogues or other chunks of language. Instructors actively teach phono- logical and grammatical rules, and all four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) are taught together. Other alternatives to the audiolingual method were classiﬁed by H. Douglas Brown as the ‘‘designer methods’’ of the 1970s. These were idiosyncratic and largely atheoretical approaches to language teaching developed by charismatic professionals, most of which are not practiced extensively today. In the Silent Way, developed by Caleb Gattegno, students’ exposure to vocabulary is extremely limited in the ﬁrst month. Words are represented on wall charts, and each letter is color-coded to provide a visual representation of sound and spelling correspondences. Students are encouraged to rely heavily on each other rather than on the teacher, who is to remain as silent as possible. The Silent Way requires considerable training on the part of the teachers. Another method, developed by Georgi Lozanov, is Suggestopedia, which originated in Bulgaria. In this approach, students are given a new persona. Classes are small and take place in a comfortable setting with easy chairs. The teacher is required to use Baroque music for the se ´ ance component of the lesson, during which the students are instructed to use yogic breath- ing in time with the music while the teacher relays the dialogue in a whisper, a dramatic voice, and in a normal reading. Lozanov claimed that the new per- sonas taken on by the students alleviate a fear of mak- ing errors; he also stated that the vocabulary gains with Suggestopedia are far superior to those of any other method. Like Suggestopedia, one of the aims of community counseling learning, which is based on principles of Rogerian psychology, is to reduce anxiety. The stu- dents sit in a circle while the teacher (counselor) stands behind them. When one student chooses to say something to another, he or she utters a sentence in the ﬁrst language and the counselor translates it into the L2. The student then repeats the translated utter- ance, and the counselor moves to the recipient to translate a reply. The students then work together on a tape recording of the lesson to work out the linguis- tic features of the new language. James Asher, the proponent of the total physical response (TPR) approach to language learning, main- tained that physical actions reinforce the learning of vocabulary. In response to a series of the teacher’s commands, students are required to act out a sequence of events (much like Gouin’s series method). For instance, students may be shown a sequence of actions that mimes washing the dishes. Their instructor then encourages them to respond to commands such as ‘‘Put in the plug,’’ ‘‘Turn on the tap,’’ ‘‘Put soap in the water,’’ ‘‘Turn off the tap,’’ and so on. Asher argued that, by acting out the behaviors, students developed a physiological memory of their new language. Asher believed that the acquisition of a L2 was the same as the acquisition of the ﬁrst language, and he encouraged a silent period in adults that parallels that observed in many children. Once learners feel comfortable with the commands, he claimed, they will start to speak on their own. English as a Second Language 345 ESL Teaching Today In the early 1980s, communicative language teaching (CLT) became the most popular approach to ESL in North America. At the same time, in Europe the notional-functional approach was widely implemen- ted. Both are still widely practiced today, either in their original form or in an adaptation. The notional- functional approach broke away from a reliance on grammatical structures as the organizing principle for L2 courses and focused instead on functional uses of language, such as greetings, invitations, apologies, opinions, and notions (contexts) such as shopping for groceries. CLT emerged out of the communicative compe- tence framework established by Canale and Swain and Stephen Krashen’s model of L2 acquisition. Krashen argued that L2 acquisition depended on exposing the learner to comprehensible input—that is, language that the learner could understand with the use of contextual clues. He suggested that the input should be at a level just slightly higher than the lear- ner’s own proﬁciency. For this reason, he advocated the use of TPR in the early stages of acquisition, because the meaning of the actions and accompanying language are readily apparent. Perhaps the most con- tentious aspect of Krashen’s theory was the distinction he made between learning and acquisition. Krashen maintained that learning involved consciously putting into memory vocabulary and grammar, whereas acquisition was the subconscious ‘‘picking up’’ of an L2. He claimed not only that learning played a very small part in the overall development of an L2 but also that learning could not turn into acquisition. In other words, learning and acquisition were viewed as two unconnected processes, and learning simply acted as an editor of acquired spoken and written forms. Another aspect of Krashen’s theory that was widely challenged was his claim that the only require- ment for mastering an L2 is that the learner is exposed to enough comprehensible input which grad- ually becomes increasingly complex. Michael Long challenged Krashen’s claim, arguing that comprehen- sible input is a necessary but insufﬁcient component of language acquisition and that interaction, which involves negotiation of meaning, is essential. Many ESL teachers embraced CLT and designed lessons that provided comprehensible input but did not explicitly teach grammar. Borrowing from notional- functional approaches in Britain, many classroom curricula were developed around themes such as ‘‘going to the doctor’’ and functi

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ons such as ‘‘making an argu- ment.’’ Often lessons cente red on vocabulary develop- ment, role playing, and group work. Although students in CLT classrooms often became relatively ﬂuent in English, they persisted in making grammatical errors. Eventually, applied linguists such as Swain, Richard Schmidt, and Long argued that L2 learners needed a focus on form within a com- municative framework. Swain put forward the output hypothesis; she maintained that unless pushed by interlocutors, students analyze their L2 at a semantic level but pay little attention to syntactic structures. By focusing on their own output, that is, their own pro- ductions in the L2, they are pushed to become more accurate syntactically because of the feedback they receive. Similarly, Schmidt proposed the noticing hypothesis. He suggested that unless learners have certain linguistic elements brought to their attention, they will not notice them in the input; in other words, a grammatical structure that is not salient or transpar- ent will not be acquired unless teachers instruct the students, either explicitly or by focusing their atten- tion on that form in a task that requires its use. Recently, some educational theorists have shifted away from viewing L2 learning as a purely psycho- logical phenomenon and toward viewing it as a social construction. The emphasis is on language as a social practice that takes place among people as they negoti- ate and co-construct meanings in a range of contexts. In pedagogical situations, a sociocultural approach does not focus on language learning as an indepen- dent activity. Students are encouraged to interact, using each other as supports while creating collective and collaborative discourse relevant to their own experiences, interests, feelings, and ideas. There is also recognition that identity is inseparable from situ- ational and cultural contexts and language. Thus, social positions and the relative power that they entail are considered to play a key role in language learning processes. Most of the preceding discussion has focused on language classrooms, but ESL is also taught through content in K–12 settings to immigrant or aboriginal children. There is a variety of delivery methods for school-age children, including pull-out for one-on- one instruction or small group work, separate ESL classrooms, and adapted lessons of subject matter that are appropriate for both ESL and native-speaking stu- dents. Bernard Mohan and his colleagues proposed 346 English as a Second Language the knowledge framework approach to adjusting the basic school curriculum to make it accessible to ESL students in mainstream classrooms, while at the same time helping them to recognize how English works. Teachers are encouraged to analyze the subject matter to be taught and the students’ texts to determine which knowledge structures (classiﬁcation, princi- ples, evaluation, description, sequencing, and choice) are evident and which linguistic structures are expressed there. For example, in a science text deal- ing with a topic such as pollution, there are likely to be discussions of cause and effect (principles) and types of pollution (classiﬁcation). Each of these knowledge structures is characterized by particular linguistic forms. Cause and effect is often repre- sented by phrases such as is due to, because of ,and as a result of. Mohan advocates the use of key visuals (e.g., time lines, ﬂow charts, tables, dia- grams) to help students see the relationships among concepts and the words that express them. Schools that have used this model have found it to be quite successful, but it is extremely time and effort inten- sive for individual teachers to modify their lessons along these lines. Two other approaches that are sometimes used to teach English to K–12 learners involve dual lan- guage and bilingual programs. The former can be characterized as two-way immersion. In New Mexico, for example, there are several schools in which half the students are native English speakers and half are native Spanish speakers. The students study in both languages and develop oral and liter- acy skills in both. Bilingual schools are patterned after immersion schools in that subject matter is taught in the students’ ﬁrst language and in English, usually a half day of each language. In Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), children can choose from more than a dozen languages that are taught in conjunc- tion with English. There is growing concern in some communities that students in K–12 classrooms are not becoming proﬁ- cient in English. One of the most vocal advocates for ESL students is Jim Cummins, who proposed that chil- dren’s oral ﬂuency can be misleading because they quickly learn basic interpersonal communication skills, but they take much longer to acquire cognitive aca- demic linguistic proﬁciency. To achieve academically, students require up to 8 years of language support, but most school districts do not have the resources to pro- vide the programs that ESL students need. EFL Most of the methods and approaches described previ- ously in this entry can be found in practice some- where in the world today in EFL settings. Because the goals of learners in these contexts are so diverse, communicative competence is not necessarily the ulti- mate objective. Thus, reading courses may be all that is required of students in some situations, because their content textbooks are written in English. How- ever, there is a growing desire for oral proﬁciency, in some locations, that has resulted in some novel peda- gogical developments. In both Korea and Spain, for example, whole English-speaking towns have been established, where native speakers of English go on a paid holiday for the express purpose of talking with Korean or Spanish EFL learners in English. Every encounter is an opportunity for a learner to have an authentic conversation with an English speaker. Factors That Affect Ultimate Attainment of English There are several variables that determine whether a learner can become completely proﬁcient in English. Age of learning has long been proposed as having a major inﬂuence on ultimate attainment. It was thought that puberty was a critical period for L2 lear- ners; however, research by James Flege and his collea- gues showed that there are many individuals who started learning English much earlier than adolescence who are easily identiﬁed as L2 speakers. They have proposed that there is a sensitive period very early in life for complete language acquisition. Others have suggested that some adult learners have attained full proﬁciency; they argue that other factors, such as amount of exposure, motivation, quality of instruction, issues of cultural identity, and native language, have more impact on ultimate attainment than age. Current Issues There are several controvers ial issues in English teach- ing today, one of which has to do with the variety of English that should be taught, particularly in EFL set- tings. Some people believe that a standard version of English such as Received Pronunciation (the Queen’s English) or standard American English is the best model for communication. Others have argued that the local variety of English should be taught, such as English as a Second Language 347 Indian English in India. The students’ purposes for learning English and who they intend to interact with should determine the model that they require. Another ongoing issue has to do with ESL assess- ment, which is not only a thriving business but also a high-stakes enterprise for L2 learners. Organizations such as Educational Testing Services produce tests such as the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Lan- guage) and the TOEIC (Test of English for Interna- tional Communication). The TOEFL is used by most postsecondary institutions in North America as an admission criterion for international students. The TOEIC is often required for job promotions in non- English-speaking countries. Because the stakes are so important for test-takers, what they choose to study and what is taught are often dictated by the nature of the tests. In the past, these tests and others focused on discrete elements of English, but they now tend to integrate linguistic skills. Another matter that concerns many instructors is the question of whether an English teacher should be a native speaker. Nonnative instructors have argued that they have a better understanding of the difﬁcul- ties faced by their students; they also offer a more realistic model of what can be accomplished. How- ever, in many EFL contexts, employers give prefer- ence to native speakers of English, even though many have little or no training. Others argue that native speaker status is immaterial and that there are two fundamental requirements of any good ESL or EFL teacher: high proﬁciency and high linguistic aware- ness in English and strong pedagogical skills. In recent years, there has been a growing recogni- tion that ESL and EFL instructors should be profes- sionals and should meet standards established by national or international organizations. Furthermore, standards have also been developed for programs. There are still many contexts in which English is taught where neither the instructor nor the program has been approved or meets any set of standards, but this will likely change in the coming decades. Tracey M. Derwing and Judy Cameron See also Bilingual Education; Bilingualism; Multicultural Classrooms Further Readings Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman. Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, M. (2004). Language learning and teacher education: A sociocultural approach. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Spada, N. (1997). Form-focussed instruction and second language acquisition: A review of classroom and laboratory research. Language Teaching , 30 , 73–87. E PISODIC M EMORY Episodic memory refers to a division of declarative memory responsible for storing and retrieving infor- mation about one’s own personal experiences. Epi- sodic memory is the theoretical component of the memory system that allows one to revisit and relive events that occurred within one’s personal history. Once experienced, events such as one’s ﬁrst day of school, graduation day, and one’s ﬁrst kiss can each be called into consciousness and relived at a later time because of episodic memory. Episodic memory is deﬁned in a manner similar to another common memory system, autobiographical memory. Indeed, episodic memory and autobiographi- cal memory are similar enough that some theorists have suggested that the two terms be treated as synon- ymous. However, this proposal has been met by some resistance from advocates of autobiographical mem- ory, who point out that memory theorists who study autobiographical memory tend to focus their attention on how participants remember events of personal sig- niﬁcance, while those interested in episodic memory display far less emphasis on memories for events of autobiographical signiﬁcance. Some theorists have taken steps to further distinguish between autobio- graphical memory and episodic memory by listing measurable differences between the two systems. For example, one such difference would be that episodic memories are typically retained for a short period of time, whereas autobiographical memories are retained for a longer time. Episodic Memory in Educational Psychology Speciﬁc attempts by educational psychologists to study episodic memory have been relatively rare. This 348 Episodic Memory is surprising in that there are some intuitive applica- tions of episodic memory research that those in the education ﬁeld may ﬁnd potentially valuable. Although it seems plausible that more advanced knowledge of the application of episodic memory research to education domains might allow for the development of educational curricula that students are more likely to remember, little research has been per- formed on this idea to date. Recently, some psycholo- gists have argued that an increased emphasis on episodic memory in educational psychology could lead to curricula speciﬁcally designed to make it more likely that students remember teaching and learning experiences. Exploration of the intersection between these two active research areas may prove to be a pro- ductive avenue for future research. History of the Concept In 1972, Endel Tulving proposed a distinction between episodic memory and semantic memory (the memory system responsible for storing facts and general knowledge regarding the way the world works). In his framework, however, episodic memory is not truly independent of semantic memory but rather is a subsys- tem that is highly dependent on semantic memory. To help operationalize the differences between episodic memory and other forms of memory, Tulving proposed that we have two ways of accessing the events from our past: remembering and knowing. In Tulving’s conceptualization, we ‘‘remember’’ a piece of informa- tion from the past when the information is accompanied by the conscious recall of speciﬁc details associated with original experience of the information. In contrast, we sometimes remember information from the past but have no conscious recollection of any details about how we learned the information. Tulvingreferredtothis type of access to the past as ‘‘knowing.’’ Upon its introduction, the distinction between epi- sodic memory and semantic memory was readily accepted as a useful heuristic for classifying memory tasks and procedures. However, controversy soon bloomed when it was proposed that episodic memory and semantic memory were functionally and biologi- cally distinct systems. Evidence for Separate Systems Tulving and his colleagues have developed a number of lines of evidence intended to differentiate episodic memory from semantic memory. These lines of evi- dence range from the phenomenological, to the tradi- tionally behavioral, to the physiological. On the phenomenological end of the evidence, Tulving points out that episodic memories have an affective tone associated with them that is missing in semantic memory. A more traditionally behavioral area where episodic memory has been theorized to dissociate from semantic memory is in how likely subjects are to lose information from the respective systems. Some have proposed that episodic memory is more vulnera- ble to forgetting than is semantic memory. Physiological evidence for a distinction between episodic and semantic memory systems comes from neuropsychological case studies. The best example of these case studies comes from patient K.C. (amnesic case studies are frequently referred to by their initials in the neuropsychological literature to provide a degree of protection for their anonymity). K.C. exhibits symp- toms consistent with a distinction between episodic memory and semantic memory in that his episodic memory was almost entirely destroyed in a motorcycle accident, while his semantic memory remains rela- tively intact. K.C cannot recall any personal experi- ences but is able to learn new facts. Although a handful of similar cases exist, brain damage similar to that observed in K.C. is extraordinarily rare. These cases demonstrate that it is possible to have a func- tional semantic memory in the absence of episodic memory. Functional neuroimaging studies have been used to identify the physiological underpinnings of episodic memory. Distinct patterns of cortical activation asso- ciated speciﬁcally with episodic memory have been identiﬁed. Neuroimaging studies have typically found medial and left lateralized activation patterns associ- ated with retrieval of episodic memories. In particular, the medial frontal cortex and left hippocampus tend to be active during episodic memory retrieval. Criticisms of the Separate Systems View Although the previously discussed evidence has been interpreted by Tulving and others as support for the idea that episodic memory is a memory system dis- tinct from semantic memory, some have argued that this distinction is unnecessary. In keeping with the scientiﬁc value of parsimony, it has been argued that there may not be a need to hypothesize multiple Episodic Memory 349 memory systems. Indeed, several of the studies cited as evidence for a distinction between semantic mem- ory and episodic memory have been questioned by the theory’s critics. For example, critics note that the hypothesized distinction between forgetting rates in episodic memory and semantic memory does not seem to be supported by the data. Research Since the episodic memory distinction was ﬁrst pro- posed in 1972, hundreds of studies of episodic mem- ory have been conducted, and episodic memory remains an active area of research today. Although memory theorists continue to debate whether episodic memory is a truly separate system from semantic memory, most agree that the concept of episodic memory has utility. Jeremy K. Miller See also Long-Term Memory; Memory Further Readings Maguire, E. A. (2002). Neuroimaging studies of autobiographical event memory. In A. Baddeley, M. Conway, & J. Aggleton (Eds.), Episodic memory: New directions in research (pp. 164–180). New York: Oxford University Press. Martin, J. (1993). Episodic memory: A neglected phenomenon in the psychology of education. Educational Psychologist , 28 , 169–183. McKoon, G., Ratcliff, R., & Dell, G. S. (1986). A criticism of the semantic-episodic distinction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 12 , 295–306. Tulving, E. (1972). Epsiodic and semantic memory. In E Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press. Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press. Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology , 53 , 1–25. E QUILIBRATION Developmental theorists make a distinction between developmental states and developmental mechanisms. Developmental states are chronologically arranged snapshots of children’s skill levels at particular points in time. An example of a sequence of developmental states would be the four stages of cognitive develop- ment that were proposed by Jean Piaget in his classic theory (i.e., sensori-motor, preoperations, concrete operations, formal operations). As children enter a new stage, they acquire a new set of skills and move to a new level of performance. Developmental mechan- isms , in contrast, are the factors that are used to explain children’s progression through developmental states (i.e., why a child progresses from one state to another in a sequence). The primary developmental mechanism in Piaget’s theory is called equilibration. Equilibration pertains to restoring the balance between two compet- ing tendencies in the mind: assimilation and accommo- dation. Piaget used the notion of assimilation to describe the process of incorporating experiences and information into existing knowledge structures in the mind. Metaphorically, children ﬁnd a ‘‘home’’ for this information in their existing knowledge structures. To say that a child has assimilated an idea or experience is to say that he or she understood the idea or experi- ence. Piaget thought that mental assimilation was anal- ogous to the biological assimilation that takes place when the human body extracts what it needs from food and incorporates the extracted nutrients into existing organs and tissues. Sometimes an idea is so discrepant from what a child believes or knows that it cannot be assimilated. Piaget used the notion of accommodation to describe the process of changing the existing conﬁguration of knowledge in the mind in order that the troublesome idea can be assimilated. In most cases, assimilation is always partial in the sense that children only assimilate that portion of an experience that is consistent with their current understanding. And unless an experience or idea is identical to previous ones, every act of assimilation usually precipitates accommodation of knowledge as well. For example, when a child encoun- ters a new species of dog for the ﬁrst time and is told that it is a dog, this information ﬁnds a home in the existing network of ideas (i.e., it is assimilated), but the network is also changed as the child’s mind creates a new representation corresponding to the new subtype of dog (i.e., there is accommodation). In his book, Play, Dreams, and Imitation ,Piaget argued that ‘‘imitation is a continuation of accommo- dation, play is a continuation of assimilation, and intelligence is a harmonious combination of the two’’ (p. 104). This quote suggests that when one assimi- lates, one inserts one’s own ideas into reality; when 350 Equilibration one accommodates, one’s schemes and ideas come into closer conformity with reality and tend to be fairly direct copies of it. Play and fantasy, moreover, are examples of overassimilation (i.e., putting too much of one’s ideas into reality). In contrast, children engage in overaccommodation when they try to directly copy the actions of someone (without putting their own ‘‘spin’’ on the actions). To illustrate assimilation and accommodation fur- ther, consider the following example. Young pre- schoolers who are passengers in their parents’ cars often think that the moon is following them when they drive at night. The physics of the explanation of what is actually happening is too abstract for young children to comprehend, so they could not assimilate even this explanation if it were provided. Ultimately, however, their knowledge of the physical world will change enough that they may eventually understand the explanation as young adults. Piaget argued that confronting discrepant ideas is absolutely essential for knowledge growth. If children never had experiences or heard information that con- tradicted the erroneous ideas that they construct by themselves, they would never develop the correct conceptions. Thus, the ‘‘readiness’’ idea of waiting until a child’s mind matures enough to teach a topic to them is actually an implication of nativism, not Piaget’s constructivism. Piaget did not believe that ideas were inborn as nativists do; rather, he believed that children build up their ideas step by step. Moreover, Piaget argued that assimilation and accommodation work in opposition to each other. The central tendency for assimilation is to keep the exist- ing knowledge structure the same and ﬁnd a place for new information in this structure. The central ten- dency for accommodation, in contrast, is to change the existing knowledge structure. It is not possible to keep things the same and change them at the same time. Thus, only one or the other—assimilation or accommodation—‘‘wins out’’ in a given situation. This ‘‘battle’’ between these processes means that change in children’s misconceptions can be frustrat- ingly slow for teachers. That is, even when a miscon- ception is repeatedly pointed out and explained to children, they may cling to the erroneous idea for some time. Perhaps this implies that assimilation normally takes precedence over accommodation. When the battle is resolved over some idea and a bal- ance is restored between assimilation and accommo- dation (i.e., equilibration has occurred), children’s understanding usually moves to a higher plane and often becomes more abstract as well. For example, for children to come to understand that dogs and peo- ple are both animals, they have to change their con- cept of ‘‘animal’’ in such a way that it is more abstract (e.g., ‘‘a living thing that can move itself’’ from ‘‘furry four-legged things’’). Piaget argued that equilibration was particularly adaptive because the changes that are incorporated into mental structures are such that the mental system of ideas becomes capable of anticipating future pro- blems that might arise. That is, the change not only allows a child to assimilate a particular idea that once was difﬁcult to grasp but also helps the child grasp related ideas that he or she has not yet encountered. In this way, equilibration works in a manner analo- gous to how the immune system creates structures (i.e., antibodies) that can deal with problems that arise in the future (i.e., reoccurrence of a virus that was encountered before). James P. Byrnes See also Cognitive Development and School Readiness; Constructivism; Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Further Readings Chapman, M. (1988). Constructive evolution. Origins and development of Piaget’s thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gruber, H. E., & Vone ` che, J. (1995). The essential Piaget. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: W. W. Norton. Piaget, J. (1983). Piaget’s theory. In P. Mussen (Series Ed.) & R. Lerner (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1). New York: Wiley. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books. E RIKSON ’ S T HEORY OF P SYCHOSOCIAL D EVELOPMENT In one biography, Erik Erikson is referred to as an architect of identity. He was trained in psychoanaly- sis, and one of his main scholarly interests was Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development 351 describing the nature of humankind. He engaged in personal and cultural observations in his theoretical writings about identity formation. His major contribu- tion was the formulation of an elaborate life-span the- ory of identity formation based on eight life stages. Each stage is based on age-appropriate and culturally deﬁned crises, or turning points, which demand that the individual choose between dialectic and opposing developmental outcomes. Each stage outcome pro- vides a contribution to identity formation in the form of ego strengths. Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development has been useful in helping teachers and educators to understand child development for more than 50 years. It remains a solid theoretical perspective for under- standing child and adolescent development and adult learning. There is an ever-expanding body of research that demonstrates Erikson’s many ideas can be empir- ically supported as being valid and practical. Definitions of Identity Identity is deﬁned in many ways. Most often Erikson refers to ego identity , or the portion of personality that functions to direct, guide, and select thought and action. It is the part of personality that refers to the consistency and sameness that a person uses as a style of individuality and its meaning about the self for sig- niﬁcant others like family members, teachers, or friends. Identity can be thought of as a form of rela- tively persistent character one shares with others. In addition to ego identity, Erikson also refers to the stable and coherent, but yet evolving, character one develops with a group’s ideals in the form of social identity. Social identity is most readily observed in the expectations and commitments to the values, goals, and ideals of institutions such as reli- gion, politics, occupation, and the family. In particu- lar, social identity is based on the ideology that is formed within a commitment to a particular institu- tional value. For example, an occupational identity based on the achievement motive of capitalism differs from an occupational identity based on the conformist motive of a communism ideology. Religious identities differ within Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, or other forms of religious social ideologies. Likewise, political identities vary among party, state, or group ideologies. Families vary as to the values, goals, and aspira- tions that parents have for their children, and identiﬁcation with family ideologies will vary widely within any given community. Many factors will con- tribute to whether youth will identify (or not) with their own family values and ideologies. Indeed, indi- viduals strive toward psychology unity, where various domains of identity across the various institutional ideologies merge into a comfortable coherent and consistent sense of individuality. Extreme differences in values or incompatible goals or values in adopted commitments create angst or anxiety that links with self-consciousness and discomfort, leaving a person with a sense of fragmentation. A fragmented self (or incompatible elements within either an ego identity or a social identity) will lead to uncomfortable states of anxiety and a sense of inner conﬂict. Eight Life Stages The eight life stages that facilitate identity formation are set by societal expectations to accomplish speciﬁc developmental tasks. Each of these tasks, as it is suc- cessfully resolved, provides an innovative strength to both ego- and social-iden tity development. These stages are based on an epigenetic principle wherein the individual is driven toward , is aware of, and interacts with life dilemmas. Human growth is based on a dialec- tic struggle of inner (psychol ogical) and outer (social) forces where each stage of lif e involves a crisis or turn- ing point. Each of the life stages provides a critical point to increase potential for growth in identity based on an ontogenetic evolution. Healthy development is based on the assumption that every stage comes to its ascendance: A crisis is resolved and is, ideally, con- cluded with an effective and meaningful identity reso- lution. To complete a life stage, a person must synthesis (or resynthesize) early childhood identiﬁca- tions for novel and newly constructed identiﬁcations. Put another way, the individual must both selectively repudiate and assimilate ch ildhood identiﬁcations with new conﬁgurations of ego identity. Each stage of life consists of issues regarding a des- ignated age or stage, questions and virtues, appropri- ate precursors, contributions to identity, and a radius of social order. Erikson begins with infancy and a cri- sis of trust versus mistrust. In general terms the ques- tion to be answered is ‘‘What do I have and what can I give?’’ The virtue is hope. In early childhood, the crisis is autonomy versus shame and doubt. The ques- tion is ‘‘What can I will freely?’’ and the virtue is will. Somewhat later in childhood the crisis becomes 352 Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development initiative versus guilt, and the question is ‘‘What can I imagine I will be?’’ The virtue is purpose. For the school-age child, the crisis is industry versus inferior- ity, and the question is ‘‘What can I learn to make?’’ The virtue is competence. In adolescence, the crisis is identity versus role confusion. The question is ‘‘Who do I choose to be ideologically and occupationally?’’ The virtue is ﬁdelity. In young adulthood, the ques- tion the crisis is intimacy versus isolation. The ques- tion focuses on ‘‘What I can give to another?’’ The virtue is love. In middle adulthood, the crisis is gener- ativity versus stagnation. The question is ‘‘What I can give and care for?’’ The virtue is care. As one approaches old age, the crisis is integrity versus despair. The question is ‘‘What is the essence of my existence?’’ The virtue is wisdom. The radius of social order begins with the impor- tant power of the maternal person and expands through school, community, technology, and beyond. In infancy, the contribution to identity is time per- spective versus time diffusion, and the radius is the maternal person. In early childhood, the contribution to identity is self-certainty versus identity conscious- ness, and the radius is parental care. In childhood, the contribution is role experimentation versus negative identity, and the radius is the basic family. For the school-age child, the contribution is the anticipation of achievement, and the social radius is the neighbor- hood, school, and technology. In adolescence, the contribution is identity consolidation, and the social radius includes peer groups, models of leadership, and ideological perspectives of the social institutions asso- ciated with occupation, family, religion, and politics. Importance of Psychosocial Moratorium Each of the ﬁrst ﬁve life stages provides an important precursor to identity formation, and the remaining three offer further consolidation through the virtues of love, care, and wisdom. However, Western societies, in particular, provide an extended period of time for role experimentation to explore identity options and select and make commitments to those identity frag- ments that will become integrated into a uniformed sense of ego identity and social identity. This period of time is called a psychosocial moratorium. It is a period when schools, parents, and communities allow for experimentation and offer opportunities for teenagers and sometimes even emerging adults to explore what they can do to select and prepare for an occupation, profession, or career. During this time, youth can ﬁnd many teachers, parents, adults, and others ready to role model and assist in preparing them through education, mentoring, and apprentice- ship experiences. Failure of youth to effectively utilize the psychosocial moratorium can result in a negative identity whereby youth identify with nega- tive features or characteristics of society that cause the youth to appear rebellious or alienated. Women’s Identity The most controversial aspect of Erikson’s theory of identity development is his writings on gender differ- ences. In early psychoanalytic writings based on observations during play therapy, boys were observed to use play building blocks to make towers, whereas girls made circles or walled enclosures. This led to notions of boys using outer or phallic space and girls using inner biological space in their psychology development and to the belief that girls’ development was based, in large part, on their biological destiny of procreation and motherhood. Thus, identity formation for men occurs with identity formation functioning clearly as a precursor to intimacy formation. In con- trast, for women, identity formation unfolds concur- rently with intimacy formation. There has been ample critique of this controversial statement on gender dif- ference; however, there is little strong empirical research evidence of a longitudinal nature to establish whether or not this hypothesis is accurate. Most of the evidence that has been presented to indicate Erikson’s notion of biological destiny for women’s identity for- mation trajectory has been of a qualitative nature and could easily be interpreted arguably as supporting or not supporting this assumption. Nonetheless, the posi- tion on biological determinism was maintained by Erikson throughout all of his lectures, writings, and interviews. In a historical period of heightened femi- nism, this position was unpopular and often criticized. Identity Statuses Theoretical perspectives are often difﬁcult to deﬁne and measure. Only limited aspects of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development have been deﬁned well enough to measure. The two stages most widely stud- ied have been identity versus role confusion and inti- macy versus stagnation . Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development 353 James Marcia identiﬁed two dimensions from Erikson’s writings that are part of the developmental process of identity formation. These dimensions include a searching or crisis process and an outcome of commitment. Using these two dimensions and crossing them at the midpoint in the middle he cre- ated four states (which he called statuses ): no searching and no commitment, no searching and commitment, searching and no commitment, and searching and commitment. In his framework, searching, or identity crisis , involved active attempts to formulate or construct an identity. Commitment refers to the construction and formulation of a com- fortable sense of identity. No searching and no com- mitment is called identity diffusion. No searching but with commitment is called foreclosure , a form of identity where there is a passive acceptance of identity of a previous generation or parents. Search- ing but no reported commitment is called morato- rium , an individual who is in the process of actively trying to formulate a sense of self through discovery and or self-creation. Finally, evidence of past search- ing and current commitment is called identity achievement. Clinical and social science research reveals that adolescents and youth with diffused ego identity are most likely to have mental health pro- blems, whereas their peers who are identity achieved are most likely to have the best mental health of the four types of identity status types. These ﬁndings are fully consistent with Erikson’s theory of ego-identity formation. Jacob Orlofsky and colleagues used three major criteria for assessing a person’s level of intimacy as suggested by Erikson: 1. Does the person have close relationships with male and female friends? 2. Does he or she have an enduring heterosexual relationship? 3. Are the person’s close relationships deep or superﬁ- cial? (Depth includes openness, affection, respect, loyalty, a capacity to accept and resolve differ- ences, and mutuality.) Based on these criteria, ﬁve relationships, or inti- macy statuses, can be identiﬁed through interview techniques. At the two extremes are the intimate and the isolated statuses. The intimacy status involves love and an enduring commitment. In the isolated sta- tus, the person is withdrawn and has no close personal associations. Between these two extremes are three other types. The preintimate status is a loving rela- tionship but with no enduring commitment. A stereo- typed status is an association with male or female friends that lacks depth and closeness. The pseudointi- mate status is artiﬁcial; it only seems to have depth and caring. Wide use of the intimacy and identity statuses has revealed that individuals who are identity diffused are also intimacy isolated. In contrast, identity-achieved individuals have considerably more intimate relation- ships. This is again consistent with Erikson’s notions of interstage linkages among identity and intimacy resolutions in the ﬁfth and six stages of ego-identity development. Power of Educational Institutions Social institutions have a variety of processes by which they motivate and encourage individuals to develop. The strongest inﬂuence is through the ascendance of age-based crisis points where the expectation is that the individual will make a turning point by resolving a challenge between two opposing oppositions (e.g., identity formation versus role con- fusion) during the teenage and emerging adult years. Work and educational systems provide mentors and teachers to help guide and direct youth to make choices through role modeling, instruction, encour- agement, and other positive educational techniques. Erikson indicates that the best teachers are ones that know how to balance play with work to make the decision a pleasurable and positive experience. Edu- cational research clearly demonstrates that positive instructors and peers enhance identity formation among students during the high school and college years. Gerald R. Adams See also Identity Development; Psychoanalytic Theory; Psychosocial Development; Social Development Further Readings Coleman, R. (Ed.). (2000). The Erik Erikson reader. New York: W. W. Norton. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York: W.W. Norton. Friedman, L. J. (1999). Identity’s architect: A biography of Erik H. Erikson. New York: Scribner. 354 Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development E SSAY T ESTS Essay tests are a type of constructed-response assessment in which test-takers display skills and knowledge by writing responses to an assigned task, question, or prompt. Instead of selecting answers to multiple-choice questions, the test-taker may be required to present an opinion on an issue, explain a chemical process, describe a scene in a foreign lan- guage, present conclusions drawn from a set of eco- nomic data, write a narrative, or demonstrate other skills and understandings in writing. The tasks may be simple or highly complex, discrete or multiphased; the response format may vary from a paragraph to a letter, a multiparagraph essay, a proposal, and so on. For centuries, essay testing was the primary form of assessment. But with an emphasis on statistical rigor and the advent of rapid-scanning equipment and other technical advances in the mid-20th century, selected- response tests (primarily multiple-choice tests) emerged as a generally more objective, efﬁcient, and cost-effec- tive form for large-scale assessments. Selected-response tests usually sample a broader content domain: In an hour of testing time, test-takers might respond to 45 multiple-choice questions instead of only one or a few essay questions. Furthermore, the more questions in a test, the less a test-taker ’s performance on any one question inﬂuences the ﬁna l score. These factors, in addition to the right-or-wrong nature of the questions, make selected-response tests ‘‘more reliable’’—that is, test-takers’ scores are sub stantially more consistent across different versions of the same test. As selected- response testing evolved, essay testing was often dis- missed as more subjective and less reliable. In recent decades, however, developments in cog- nitive psychology and an increased emphasis on more authentic assessment have helped spur interest in hav- ing test-takers display or perform certain skills. Essay testing has become a highly rigorous discipline sup- ported with research, technological advancements, and published guidelines for best practices (although theorists continue to debate conceptual issues, includ- ing the extent to which test reliability should be emphasized or readers should set aside their personal reactions to essay responses). Essay testing requires careful deliberation at every stage. The process of specifying the domain of content and skills to be assessed often includes surveys, focus- group sessions, committee deliberations, or reviews of professional and curriculum standards. The develop- ment process may also include prototype testing of var- ious formats, directions, topics, and evaluation criteria, as well as questionnaires or interviews ascertaining test-takers’ opinions about the tasks. Below are some important steps in designing an essay test: • Determine which skills and knowledge are best assessed via essay tasks. • Consider the extent to which writing ﬂuency could unduly affect measurement of other skills or knowledge. • Include a sufﬁcient number of test questions— possibly combining essay tasks and selected- response questions—for desired content coverage and reliable scores. • Provide adequate time for each task. • Consider how requiring test-takers either to hand- write or word process essay responses may affect test-takers’ ability to display the skills being assessed. • Give test-takers ample opportunity to prepare by prepublishing information about the task types and scoring standards, including sample questions and sample responses with scores and commentary. • Determine the extent to which evidence supports the claim that the essay test is valid for its intended purpose—that is, that the inferences and actions based on test scores will be appropriate, meaningful, and useful. For example, conduct studies to investi- gate relationships between test-takers’ performance on the essay test and demonstrations of the same skills in other contexts. In essay testing, how responses are scored becomes an integral part of test design. First, the scoring meth- odology determines what type of information will be obtained. One common approach is holistic scoring, in which a reader appraises the overall quality of a response to assign a single score. Holistic scoring can reﬂect the integrated nature of proﬁciencies such as writing, reading comprehension, and/or critical- thinking skills; moreover, it is an efﬁcient approach to scoring large volumes of responses. However, it does not provide the diagnostic feedback or detailed infor- mation that may be gained from more time-consuming analytic scoring, in which a reader may evaluate the different features or traits of a response separately or else award scores based on the presence or absence of speciﬁed components (e.g., particular facts about a chemical process). In practice, testing programs may employ variants of holistic or analytic scoring. Essay Tests 355 Second, to make scoring more reliable, it is impor- tant to develop explicit and carefully crafted evalua- tion guidelines: the rubrics or scoring guides that usually require the reader to apply a variety of speciﬁ- cally deﬁned criteria (e.g., accuracy of information, aptness of examples, clarity of expression). Ideally, these criteria embody the consensus of the relevant community of educators and readers. Rubrics also stipulate the scale of numeric or descriptive score levels that readers can assign. For large-scale testing programs, operational scor- ing procedures are usually highly structured and stan- dardized. Scoring sessions may be centralized ,with all the readers gathered together, or distributed,with readers geographically dispersed. Distributed scoring can be done online, with readers accessing training materials and scoring responses via an Internet appli- cation. Online systems bring great efﬁciency to the scoring process and allow the scoring leadership to monitor it using up-to-the-minute data on reader per- formance, including score distributions and rates of interreader agreement. Scoring protocols that help promote fairness and accuracy include training of readers both before and throughout the scoring session as well as mentoring and monitoring by experienced readers who serve as scoring leaders. Training should familiarize readers with the principles of the scoring methodology, the rubrics, the essay tasks, and the exemplar responses that, for each topic or question, help deﬁne each score level in the rubric. As part of the protocols, many test- ing programs enhance score reliability by requiring that two readers independently score each response, with a third independent reading to resolve cases in which, according to program standards, the initial two scores differ too widely. The ﬁeld of essay testing continues to evolve. Recent technological developments include automated scoring by software applications that use semantic analysis or other types of computational approaches intended to emulate the judgments of human readers. Ongoing research and reﬁnements in essay testing are also making it possible to assess a wider range of skills and knowledge and enhance the authenticity of essay tasks. Mary E. Fowles and Nora V. Odendahl See also Assessment; Multiple-Choice Tests; Reliability; Validity Further Readings Breland, H. M., Bridgeman, B., & Fowles, M. E. (1999). Writing assessment in admission to higher education: Review and framework (ETS Rep. No. RR-99-3). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Educational Testing Service. (2005). ETS guidelines for constructed-response and other performance assessments (ETS Publication No. 727534). Princeton, NJ: Author. Martinez, M. E. (1999). Cognition and the question of test item format. Educational Psychologist 34 , 207–218. Walstad, W. B., & Watts, M. (2006). Testing for depth of understanding in economics using essay questions. Journal of Economic Education , 37 (1), 38–47. Wolcott, W. (with Legg, S. M.). (1998). An overview of writing assessment: Theory, research, and practice. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. E THICS AND R ESEARCH The knowledge base in educational psychology has been developed by individuals who have conducted research to uncover truths ab out the affective, cognitive, and behavioral attributes of learners. The growth of any discipline is dependent upon the worthiness of the research that it produces. Research is deﬁned as system- atic investigation, including research development, test- ing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. Effective research must meet the criteria of being relevant and ethically pro- duced. When research does not live up to the standards of deﬁned practice, research misconduct inquiries and investigations are used by i nstitutions to identify the objectionable practice and to remediate the affects. Research ethics is a broad term that is used to describe adherence to the shared values of efﬁciency, truthfulness, accuracy, and objectivity. Ethical research must use resources wisel y and convey information truthfully by carefully reporting results in a truthful manner without bias. A more narrowly focused term— responsible conduct of research —relates to more deﬁn- able practices that prescribe the research behavior required of investigators. Responsible conduct of research must take into consideration the following eight elements: 1. Data acquisition and management 2. Mentor–trainee relationships 3. Publication practices and authorship 4. Peer review practices 356 Ethics and Research 5. Collaborative research activities 6. Protection of human subjects 7. Research involving animals 8. Management of conﬂict of interest and commitment More speciﬁcally, responsible conduct of research refers to meeting the requirements relating to those con- cepts mandated by Congress a nd the regulations promul- gated by federal agencies. However, the broader view of research ethics goes beyond what is required and relates to what should be done regarding moral dilemmas that surround how to make the best research decision. The federal regulations relating to responsible conduct of research stem from three acts passed by Congress: the 1966 Animal Welfare Act (Public Law [P.L.] 89–544), the 1974 National Research Act (P.L. 93–348), and the 1985 Health Research Extension Act (P.L. 99–158). The 1985 Health Research Exten- sion Act resulted, in 1989, in the establishment of the Ofﬁce of Scientiﬁc Integrity (OSI) and the Ofﬁce of Scientiﬁc Integrity Review (OSIR). In 1992 the Ofﬁce of Research Integrity (ORI) was established and took over the activities of the former two ofﬁces, including the monitoring of research misconduct. In addition to the regulations developed from these acts, the executive branch agencies of the government have developed guidelines and policies that represent requirements relating to their normal operation. For example, the National Institutes of Health has issued policies for grant awards, and the ORI has issued a Model Policy and Procedures for Responding to Allegations of Scientiﬁc Misconduct. Beyond the federal policies are disciplinary codes of ethics and institutional policies. Most disciplines have outlined principles and, in some cases, appropri- ate practices that relate to the ethical practice of research. Universities and other institutions must also have research policies if they are to receive federal funds. Again, these policies may go beyond the recommendations of the federal guidelines. Many of these policies amplify and implement the federal guidelines that make up the various elements of responsible conduct of research. Data Acquisition and Management Issues relating to data acquisition and management include collection of information, storage, ownership of data, and sharing of data. Collection of information is governed by principles of effective research. The quality of research depends upon the use of appropriate research methods. Investi- gators need to be precise in the collection and han- dling of data. The results must be carefully recorded, analyzed, and interpreted. Data can be recorded in numbered bound notebooks, by permanently dated electronic ﬁles, or other permanent means. Information should be stored in a safe place that is not subject to the elements or catastrophes. Electronic ﬁles should be backed up and stored away from the original data. Other materials, such as samples or videos, should be protected so that they do not degrade. Conﬁdential information must be stored in areas that prevent unintended access. Ownership of data that is generated by researchers is a complex matter. There are various parties that may have claims on the ownership of data. The uni- versity or the institution that employs the researcher and governmental or foundation funding sources have a stake in the data collected. Researchers must report the results of their work to the granting agencies, but the control of the data generated is the responsibility of the institution that received the funding. If the funding source was a contract, the researcher will be obligated to provide a product at the end of the project. The organization that received the funding has responsibilities to maintain the data collected. Researchers who leave employment at one institution and take a position at another must seek approval to relocate the data that they have collected. Mentor–Trainee Relationships Responsible conduct of research includes developing mentor–trainee relationships. Successful researchers have an obligation to foster the development of others who are learning to become researchers. It is the responsibility of a good mentor to help the student capitalize on the educational experience and to accul- turate the student into the practices and ethics of the profession. A mentorship relationship requires that the mentor provide a supportive learning environment. The mentor must devote a sufﬁcient amount of time to facilitate the development of the trainee. This will include providing training, supervision, and honest appraisal. The mentor, through example, will teach the basics of data collection, interpretation, and publi- cation and will give due credit to the trainee for his or her contributions. The mentor will help the student Ethics and Research 357 understand the values of the profession and how to maneuver within the accepted guidelines. Included in the culture of the profession is the way it treats authorship and publication practices. Publication Practices and Authorship Modern copyright ﬁrst appeared in Britain in the 17th century to protect the printing industry from others who would duplicate their products. According to Corynne McSherry, eventually the concept of copy- right came to encompass protection of the intellectual property of the author. At most universities, faculty are assigned the copy- right for their works of scholarship unless those rights relate to a patentable product. This policy allows fac- ulty to publish freely without restriction and dissemi- nate to the public the results of their research and scholarship. In situations in which research leads to a new discovery that can be patented, publication may be restricted until a patent can be assigned. A patent prevents others from practicing the invention and gives the developer the right to practice the invention or seek licensing allowing others to com- mercialize the discovery. Premature publication may prevent the establishment of a patent. Early disclosure of results of research is often pro- vided at professional meetings and is later further documented in scholarly publications. Fair practices of publication require that all documents provide a detailed and objective description of the research that was conducted. It should describe the methods used, indicate the results discovered, and provide an open assessment of the ﬁndings. When individuals collaborate on a publication, it is often unclear as to who will be credited as the main author and who will have a lesser role. Usually authors are listed in publications in the order of the importance of their contributions. However, whereas in some disciplines the most important contributor is listed ﬁrst, in others this individual is listed last. Dis- putes can arise regarding the order of authorship when the authors have failed to discuss this issue before- hand. In psychology the code of ethics states psychol- ogists must take responsibility and credit, including authorship credit, only for work they have actually performed or to which they have substantially contrib- uted. In addition, principal authorship and other publication credits must accurately reﬂect the relative scientiﬁc or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their relative status. The code goes on to say that minor contributions to the research or to the writing for publications are acknowledged appropriately, such as in fo otnotes or in an introductory statement. Although it is recognized that only individuals who have made signiﬁcant intellectual contributions to an article should be listed as authors, there is no universal understanding as to what constitutes a signif- icant contribution. In an attempt to bring clarity to this ambiguity, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) proposed a set of guidelines that are often used. The ICMJE declared that authors must have taken responsibility for portions of the arti- cle’s content. This could include contributions to the development and design, acquisition of data, or analy- sis and interpretation of data. The author must have had a role in the drafting of the article or be involved in the critical revision of the content. The author must also be in a position to approve the ﬁnal version to be published. According to the ICMJE, acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group would by itself qualify an individ- ual as an author without meeting the previously stated criteria. The ICMJE further stated that the order of authorship should be a joint decision of the coauthors. The greatest contribution of the ICMJE was to sug- gest that authors should provide a description of what each person has contributed to the article and that others who did not meet these criteria for authorship but had contributed to the article should be acknowl- edged but not listed as authors. Responsible publication practices dictate that the same research results should not be repeated in differ- ent publications without citing the previous publica- tion. Duplicate publications have the result of wasting time and resources and also tend to overemphasize results beyond their actual importance. A review of the literature would unfairly weigh the results of the research in favor of the author’s conclusions when it has been repeated in multiple journals. Peer Review Practices Once an article has been written, it is customary to submit it to a journal for peer review by colleagues who have expertise in the topic and can provide a fair review of the manuscript. Peer review helps deter- mine which research is reliable, valid, and should be published and which research has ﬂaws and should 358 Ethics and Research not be made available to the profession. It is a univer- sal process that takes place in all countries and has the effect of professionals monitoring their own pro- fessions. In the same way, peer review is also a part of the process that will determine which research will be funded. Grant reviewers will evaluate the concept, methods of research, budget, and potential outcomes of the research. Peer review becomes an essential ingredient in the career of the individual and inﬂuences the direction of research an individual takes within the profession of educational psychology. With so much at stake, it is therefore important that the process be as open as pos- sible and that it have certain safeguards. Peer review must be conducted in a manner that respects the conﬁdentiality of the research and is free from the reviewer’s personal bias. The feedback must be criti- cal yet constructive in its nature so that the author may beneﬁt and so that the profession can be pro- tected. It is also necessary that it be completed within deadlines that permit publication in a timely fashion. Scholars within a profession have the obligation of investing time to review grants and publications within the profession. Individual reviewers should know their limitations when reviewing. They should review only projects for which they are adequately qualiﬁed to ren- der an informed opinion. In addition, reviewers should be familiar with the literature in the ﬁeld, be able to judge the quality of the manuscript, understand the methodology implemented, be knowledgeable about the type of analysis employed, and be capable of eval- uating whether or not the conclusion is supported by the evidence. Beyond these requirements, the reviewer must be able to identify any possible conﬂicts of inter- ests that

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might exist. If a reviewer is working on the same research as the author, he or she must disclose this conﬂict to the editors and either excuse him- or herself or be certain to review the material objectively and not use information learned from the review in his or her own research. Collaborative Research Collaborative research has many rewards but poses interesting challenges. Before research begins, colla- borators must have the same understanding of the requirements, and thus, a uniform level of training and supervision must be in place. This may include an understanding of welfare of human subjects, ani- mal subjects, and use of hazardous materials. When researchers are working together with others, either on a publication or a grant, the roles and responsibilities of each researcher must be clearly delineated. Collaborative activities require the clariﬁ- cation of the following issues: Who will submit the funding proposal? Who will submit the proposal pro- tocol for evaluation to a subject review board? Who will store the collected data? Who will have the authority to make changes in the project? Who will write the ﬁrst draft of an article, and who will report the results of the article? How will intellectual property rights be distributed? These issues can be resolved only if effective communication is estab- lished among the collaborators. If the collaborative research entails external fund- ing, ﬁnancial management can also become an issue. The Ofﬁce of Management and Budget produces two documents, Circular A-21 and A-110, which provide guidance regarding the ﬁnancial management. All members of the collaborative team need to be familiar with these documents so that they are aware of allowable expenditures, equipment use, and reporting procedures. When research involves the use of materials, it is necessary to formulate agreements that address how such materials will be transferred between researchers and their institutions. This is usually accomplished through transfer agreements that stipulate the condi- tions under which the materials can be used and infor- mation that can be disclosed as a result of their usage. Protection of Human Subjects Research that involves human subjects must be designed and conducted in a way that maximizes ben- eﬁts to the subjects while minimizing risks. The pro- cess of ensuring ethical treatment of subjects requires that all proposed research be scrutinized by a human subjects review board. Research practices in the past that failed to protect subjects led to the need for a formalized method for evaluating and approving human subject research. Much of the effort toward protecting human subjects occurred following World War II. Evidence of atroci- ties committed during the war and attributed to research activity led to regulations known as the Nur- emberg Code. This code and the later Declaration of Helsinki established an international framework that deﬁnes ethical treatment of human subjects. The Nur- emberg Code established basic principles that make Ethics and Research 359 up the expectations for ethical treatment of human subjects. They include the requirement of obtaining voluntary consent of the subject, establishing the ben- eﬁt of the study in relation to risk, avoiding unneces- sary suffering and injury, requiring adequate facilities and qualiﬁed experimenters, and allowing the subjects to discontinue involvement at any time. Even though such guidelines existed as early as 1947, unconscionable research nonetheless occurred following the war. In the United States, research on the effects of radiation was conducted on subjects in hospitals without their consent. In the 1950s and 1960s experiments on the effects of untreated syphilis were conducted on unsuspecting African American subjects by the U.S. Public Health Service in Tuske- gee, Alabama. The resulting concern over these and other violations of subjects’ rights led to governmen- tal policy. In 1974 three sets of guidelines were devel- oped by the U.S. government. First, the Congress demanded that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Department of Health and Human Services) further address standards for involving human subjects in research. The resulting outcome was Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 46 (45 CFR 46). In a similar time frame, the Food and Drug Administration established its own rules for humansubjectresearch(21CFR50and56).Alsoin 1974 the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was established. Following these efforts, in 1991 many federal governmental departments and agencies adopted a uniform set of regulations known as the Common Rule, which makes up the guidelines affecting human subject research (45 CFR 46, Subpart A-D). The Common Rule requires that studies involv- ing human subjects be approved by a human subject review board or other appropriate institutional ofﬁ- cials. The review board also should provide a continu- ing review, at least once per year, of the approved research. In some situations, the human subjects review board may identify research as being exempt from the federal requirements. The responsibility of enforcing the Health and Human Services regulations falls upon the Ofﬁce for Human Research Protections in the Ofﬁce of Public Health and Sciences. To help ensure that researchers understand the principles of protection of human subjects, the National Institutes of Health requires that investigators who submit a grant application receive training on the protection of subjects. The Common Rule requires that an institution that is engaged in federally funded human subject research must ﬁle a Federal-Wide Assurance of Protection for Human Subjects. Decisions regarding ethical treatment most directly spring from the 1979 Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The principles identiﬁed in the report include (a) respect for per- sons and their right to make autonomous decisions; (b) beneﬁcence, or the need to maximize beneﬁts while reducing risks; and © justic e, or the obligation to dis- tribute beneﬁts and risks equally among subjects. Research Involving Animals Educational psychologists often study the behavior of animals as a way of understanding principles that govern human behavior. Because animals cannot con- sent to becoming subjects and the research may not beneﬁt them directly, special care must be taken to ensure their best treatment. Just as in the case of pro- tecting human subjects, Congress has developed regu- lations that address the responsible use of animals in research. Two speciﬁc acts, the Animal Welfare Act (1966, 1970, 1976, 1985, and 1990) and the Health Research Extension Act (1985), have provided guid- ance on responsible conduct. The Animal Welfare Act concerns itself with the transportation, care, and use of animals in research. The responsibility for the regulations falls upon the U.S. Department of Agri- culture (USDA) under Title 9 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Guidelines were created from work in the 1950s by the Animal Care Panel, who established a professional standard for animal care in research. This work eventually led to The Guide for Laboratory Animal Facilities and Care , ﬁrst published in 1963 and now titled The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The Public Health Services (PHS) requires that investigators use this guidebook when establishing and conducting an institutional pro- gram of animal research. Just as human subject research requires an approval board, animal research has a similar counterpart, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The PHS deﬁnes animals as any live, vertebrate animals used or intended for use in research, research training, experi- mentation, or biological testing or for related pur- poses. However, educational psychologists intending to use animals for research should take the broadest view possible of the deﬁnition of an animal and 360 Ethics and Research should consult with their own institution’s IACUC regarding their research. Based upon the 1985 Health Research Extension Act, PHS Policy, USDA regulations, and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals ,the IACUC at each institution is empowered to administer the care and use of animals in the conduct of animal research. The IACUC has responsibilities for review- ing and approving all proposals for animal research, evaluating the animal care program of the institution, inspecting the facilities, and responding to concerns about animal care. The IACUC can also exercise independent judgment to suspend research if the guidelines for care and use of animals are not fol- lowed. Federal oversight is also provided by the Ofﬁce of Laboratory Animal Welfare and the USDA. Research must follow the federal government’s Principles for the Utilization and Care of Vertebrate Animals Used in Testing, Research, and Training. These include guidelines on transportation, care, and use of animals in research; designing research that is relevant to human or animal health, advancement of knowledge, or the good of society; use of appropriate species and the minimum number needed for results; avoiding or minimizing pain, discomfort, and distress of the animals; using appropriate sedation analgesia or anesthesia; painlessly euthanizing animals that are suffering; feeding, housing, and caring for animals appropriately; using only qualiﬁed and trained person- nel; and consulting the IACUC about any exceptions. In addition, a voluntary accreditation program is administered by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, a nonproﬁt organization that accredits programs that pass a detailed inspection. The Ofﬁce of Laboratory Ani- mal Welfare functions by relying on an assurance or signed agreement that pledges the institution to com- ply with all regulations and is monitored through an annual report. The USDA uses an inspection mecha- nism to ensure compliance. Conflict of Interest and Commitment Because one of the basic elements of research is that it must be free from bias, it is essential that any possi- ble conﬂicts of interest or commitment be identiﬁed and rectiﬁed where possible. Researchers with similar interests may experience conﬂict with one another. For example, an educational psychologist studying a new way of identifying anxiety will be interested in the research of others on this topic but may not want to share his or her results until he or she can be protected by copyright or publication. The reviewer who is conducting similar research must rec- ognize a conﬂict of interest and be certain to protect the conﬁdentiality of the material being reviewed. Con- ﬂicts are often inevitable but, in and of themselves, may not be bad. However, the researcher must be aware of them and will need to communicate their existence in order to avoid the perception that the research is unduly affected by the conﬂicts. The most common conﬂicts include those that result in ﬁnancial gain, those that affect work commitments, and those that involve intelle ctual and personal matters. Financial gain comes into play when a researcher unfairly delays a competitor’s research so that he or she can gain an advantage. A prime example might be giving a lower score on a grant review so that one will have a better chance of getting funding for his or her similar research. At other times ﬁnancial gain may not be a negative event. According to the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, investigators and their institutions that receive fed- eral funding are required t o disclose their funding through publications, copy rights, commercialization, and other means so that knowledge can be dissemi- nated to the public. This often will result in ﬁnancial beneﬁt in one form or another. Conﬂicts of work commitment can occur when the researcher has committed to more activities than can be easily accomplished. For example, when an indi- vidual has accepted too many grants, too many peer reviews, or too many consultantships, a conﬂict of work commitment may exist. When the overcommit- ment is due to the competing needs of grants, moni- toring of those activities may be accomplished through guidelines established by the Ofﬁce of Man- agement and Budget in its Circular A-21, which has regulations on how researchers can spend their time. Conﬂicts of a personal and intellectual nature affect the honest and accurate conducting, reporting, and review of research. When an investigator draws conclusions that are based primarily upon personal opinion or afﬁliations, bias can be ascribed to the decision-making process. Conﬂicts of all types need to be disclosed to avoid perception of bias in the reporting of scientiﬁc evi- dence. In the 1990s the federal government developed policies through the PHS and the National Science Foundation to address the handling of various con- ﬂicts. The policies require the researcher to report Ethics and Research 361 signiﬁcant conﬂicts before research is conducted, to manage conﬂicts of personal gain by reducing or eliminating those conﬂicts, and to provide information on how the conﬂicts have been addressed. Research Misconduct The volume of research conducted yearly continues to mount. With so many researchers gathering and reporting data, it is inevitable that a small number may engage in unethical practices. Even with so much research, it has been reported by Nicholas Steneck from the ORI that misconduct in research is at or below 1 case for every 10,000 researchers. He warns, however, that the number of conﬁrmed cases may be underestimated and that underreporting is to be expected. Research misconduct is deﬁned by the Ofﬁce of Science and Technology Policy as fabrication, falsiﬁca- tion, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or review- ing research or in reporting research results. This deﬁnition is similar to earlier deﬁnitions established by PHS and the National Science Foundation. Behavior is considered to meet this deﬁnition when it is a signiﬁ- cant departure from accepted practices, has been com- mitted intentionally or knowingly or recklessly, and has been proven by a preponderance of evidence. Although the federal deﬁnition provides a baseline for identifying abnormal practices, it does not address all of the subtle variations that constitute unethical behav- ior as described earlier in this entry. Therefore, many institutions add to the deﬁnition in order to encompass a broader view of research misconduct. When an institution receives PHS funding, it must put in place a system to address accusations of research misconduct. The mechanism must include the designa- tion of persons who are authorized to receive and investigate allegations of misconduct. It must have pro- cedures for an initial inquiry hearing to determine if the allegations are of merit. For those situations in which the allegations seem to be well-founded, the institutions must have a process to carry out a formal investigation to discover t he truth. There must be poli- cies authorizing those responsible for the investigation to impose sanctions or vindicate the researcher and to report the results of the investigation to the ORI. There must also be regulations to protect a whistleblower who provides information in good faith. William Wiener See also American Educational Research Association; Institutional Review Boards; National Assessment of Educational Progress Further Readings Long, P. (1991). Invention, authorship, ‘‘intellectual property’’ and the origin of patents: Notes toward a conceptual history. Technology and Culture , 32 , 847–890. Macrina, F. L. (2005). Scientiﬁc integrity: Text and cases in responsible conduct of research (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: ASM Press. McSherry, C. (2001). Who owns academic work? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steneck, N. H. (2004). Introduction to the responsible conduct of research. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services, Ofﬁce of Research Integrity. E THNICITY AND R ACE The effects of race and ethnicity are complex and multidimensional and have institutional and social causes. This entry provides deﬁnitions for race and ethnicity in the United States as researchers, scholars, and institutional agencies currently use the terms. Although there are both biologically derived deﬁni- tions and socially constructed deﬁnitions, the biologi- cally derived deﬁnitions are being debunked, and a more complex deﬁnition, related to racialization (i.e., the categorization of people by race, which leads to racial discrimination) is more widely accepted. There are still many weaknesses in how researchers collect information on race and ethnicity, speciﬁcally when relying on deﬁnitions provided by the U.S. cen- sus and assuming that these deﬁnitions are consistent. However, it may be that understanding the ﬂuidity of these deﬁnitions can allow researchers to improve data collection and data interpretation. Race, ethnicity, and national origin have a signiﬁ- cant impact on the life chances or life opportunities of individuals in the United States, and in the United States, education has become the means by which it is believed people gain social mobility—not solely by what they learn in the classroom but also by the social networks, prestige, and occupational credentials they gain by attending institutions of learning. Therefore, the intersections of race, ethnicity, and national origin are more profound when the disparities in educational 362 Ethnicity and Race achievements by race, ethnicity, and national origin are considered. The debate over the racial and ethnic disproportion in educational achievement has traditionally been explained by Linda Darling-Hammond as a process of biological fact. Due in part to the civil rights move- ment, a growing number of researchers of color, and a greater focus on institutional inequalities and their effects, biologically derived explanations for dispari- ties in educational achievement have given way to cultural deﬁciencies explanations. Such perspectives have been articulated by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray and by Dinesh D’souza. The most infamous of all these works has been the discredited Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve. Most of these works ignore the historical and systemic social and institutional barriers that are still in place today. Defining Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Race Within the racialization process of the United States, Blacks are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, Whites are at the top, and other groups are in the political process of managing their positions away from Blacks and closer to Whites. Max Weber, who equated ethnic group identiﬁcation to a group’s belief in a shared historical origin and common ancestry, developed the historical sociological deﬁnition of eth- nicity. In his deﬁnition, the emphasis is on belief. An ethnic relationship is believed to be equivalent to a blood relationship among the members of the ethnic group; that is, members of an ethnic group believe they share a common ancestry with members of the same ethnicity. This deﬁnition of ethnicity has been broadened to include the belief that a shared culture can determine an ethnic identity. Looking at ethnic identity as a process of a shared culture makes ethnic identity a process of the present-day connections between members of an ethnic group. Speciﬁcally, it is the culture that they share today that helps to deter- mine their shared ethnic group identity. Stephen Cor- nell and David Hartmann have argued that this emphasis on culture has complicated ethnic identities and made them less salient. However, even though cultural interpretations of ethnicity have grown in prominence, the belief in a common ancestral original history clearly distinguishes it from other sociocul- tural groups found in society, such as motorcycle riders, Goths, or even social class. Ethnicity may be less salient, but the meanings of ethnic identity are still important for members of the ethnic groups. More complex than the deﬁnition of ethnicity is the deﬁnition of race. Race has historically been deﬁned by the perceived visibly distinct physical characteristics shared, or believed to be shared, by members of a race, whereas ethnicity has been deﬁned as a process of belonging, at least contemporarily. Race is based on what makes others physically differ- ent and therefore truly not of the same biological ori- gins. Racial deﬁnitions are usually a clearer way of creating otherness. The biological basis or what a per- son views as distinct traits between individuals marks a group as genetically distinct from one’s own, and ethnicity does not have the same function. According to Weber, one becomes aware of one’s ethnicity when one comes into contact with a person not of one’s eth- nic group. However, a distinct ancestry or history does not rule out the possibility of some shared blood- line, even if distant. Race, on the other hand, denies all but the minimal possibility of shared blood rela- tionship. It is this outright biological distinctiveness that is a part of the deﬁnition of race that allows not just for the categorization of different racial groups but also for the creation of a hierarchy based on the belief that the visible racial distinctions represent only the surface of greater, more meaningful differences among races. In other words, race has historically assumed a biological distinction, and more impor- tantly, it has inherently assumed a biological hierar- chy. Ethnicity, on the other hand, marks cultural distinctiveness. There is, of course, a cultural hierar- chy that is manifested by ethnic origins. For example, English and German ethnicities are usually placed higher within these categories than Italian or Greek ethnicity. However, under the proper tutelage, ‘‘bad’’ or ‘‘deﬁcient’’ cultural values can be overcome or improved. Biological ‘‘deﬁciencies’’ cannot. Of course, racial categorization has been a process that has continuously shifted in its deﬁned lines. More so today, the biological association that exists with the term race has been further debunked by the cur- rent biological research that has shown the biological insigniﬁcance of racial categorization or the socially constructed nature of racial categories. Michael Omi and Howard Winant have noted that this has validated the claims of many social scientists and, furthermore, allowed for social scientists to show how the deﬁni- tion of race is clearly tied to shifts in political and societal needs and values. However, even though the Ethnicity and Race 363 deﬁnitions of race and ethnicity are constantly rede- ﬁned over time, these identities have real emotional and social implications for all the members of society. Housing, occupational, educational, and health oppor- tunities are all affected by racial and ethnic status. Individuals place themselves within the hierarchy of the racial and ethnic ranks, and much of their psy- chological identity is based on who they are and what they believe people assume their racial and ethnic ori- gins are. Recent studies on ‘‘color-blind racism’’ pro- vide some insight as to how important race and ethnic identities are, even for individuals who do not have to consider or think about their own racial categories. For example, studies on White undergraduates have clearly shown a valuing or devaluing of other indivi- duals based on their ethnic or racial group. Joane Nagel argues that ethnicity is a core concept, whereas national and racial categories are aspects of ethnicity. This deﬁnition may be a more appropriate deﬁnition for understanding the racialization process outside of the United States, and it can provide buf- fers for new immigrant groups arriving in the United States. For example, the most important factor for Africans in determining their reception in the United States was their race. However, consider the case of West Indians who are often protected from racializa- tion in the United States. If they are assimilated into American society, then for a portion of West Indians, the effect of racialization outweighs their more favor- able West Indian ethnicity or that, for some of these immigrants, their West Indian ethnicity provides some protection from a Black racialization. Ethnicity may, therefore, provide a process undergone by new immi- grant groups in the United States. Speciﬁcally, ethnic- ity may give members of an immigrant group the ability to integrate successfully within the racializa- tion process, by buffering some members of the immigrant group and allowing them to maintain an ethnic identity and therefore keep themselves from being considered (racially) Black. Nationalism, or the concept of a national identity, is a theoretically com- plicated idea, especially in the United States where even American Indian identity is proclaimed as a racial deﬁnition instead of a national deﬁnition, and although there may be political reasons for the exclu- sion of a national identity among American Indians, the very lack of usage of American Indian nationhood within the United States, as well as in the rest of the Americas, makes a national identity foreign or strictly understood as the identity linked to a territorial space. However, when the concept of national identity has been used in the social sciences, it has been closely linked to the deﬁnition of ethnic identity. Nagel, for example, has deﬁned national identity as chauvinistic, bordering, and articulating national character through history and culture for the eventual purposes of creat- ing statehood or nationhood. What makes Nagel’s view of ethnicity so important is its ability to incorpo- rate the global racialization process that took place during the colonization and postcolonization periods. During the colonization period, the racial and ethnic hierarchical concepts from the West were imported and incorporated throughout the world. In the United States a northern European supremacy ideology arose; in Latin America an ideology of approximating or nearing Whiteness developed; and in Africa a process of mimicking Europeanness was formed. What the global colonialization period did was to set up an internal racial or ethnic hierarchy among the colo- nized nations and within the individuals in these soci- eties that has continued during the postcolonial period. This internalized hierarchy reﬂects the earlier colonial Western racial hierarchy, although it is bound within the speciﬁc context of a postcolonial country’s historical colonial experience. The Western colonizers developed a colonial administration that provided opportunities to certain groups within the colonized nation and allowed for the members of these groups to establish themselves as superior within the inter- nally constructed racial strata. The racialization process becomes more complex when immigrants from Latin America are considered. In Latin America, the descendants of the Spanish con- quistadores were placed on the top of the racial hier- archy, followed by the mestizos, mulatos, indı ¨ genas , and negros. This hierarchy remained in place through- out the postcolonial period. An interesting phenome- non of the postcolonial national identity construction is how the process has developed a pro-Western or positivist ideology that made Europe the center and the creator of modern cultural, scientiﬁc, and progres- sive societies. The process that determines one’s racial position in Latin America may be more com- plex than that in the United States, but it is still one that is organized around a White or European pinnacle. These complexities of race and ethnicity are exac- erbatedforLatinas/osintheUnitedStates.When Latinas/os arrive in the United States, they are con- fronted with the fact that they often are not considered 364 Ethnicity and Race to be White (as they may have been in their nation of origin), and many, speciﬁcally because of their lower economic status, are considered to be more like Blacks. Immigrants who come to the United States must have resources available or a support network that allows for the migration to take place. Even the very act of migrating may be indicative of a psycho- logical orientation that allows for greater risk taking and, possibly, greater rewards. The U.S. Census and Race and Ethnicity The U.S. Census relies on Sta tistical Policy Directive No. 15, Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statis- tics and Administrative Reporting, from the Ofﬁce of Management and Budget to deﬁne race and ethnicity. Whether they use census data or collect their own data, many scholars use the U.S. Census deﬁnitions provided in the decennial census. An interesting consequence of the U.S. decennial census racial and ethnic terms and deﬁnitions is the inconsistencies that can exist from decade to decade. The consequence is not that there are changes in the examples used for the racial and eth- niccategoriesbutthattheverydeﬁnitionofaracecan change to include groups pre viously designated as dif- ferent, as with Mulattos and Blacks, or to remove groups that were included in a former census, as with Indians (Asians) and Whites. These changing deﬁni- tions over U.S. history has warranted caution on the part of researchers of race and ethnicity when compar- ing groups across time and has led credibility to the constructiveness paradigm of race and how racializa- tion happens in the United States. Critical Race Theory Critical race theory is an important construct in edu- cation and race. Critical race theory is a perspective that has been used by academics of color to help explain, identify, and critique racist elements within the structure of society. The critical race theory framework originates from critical theory, which calls on individuals to actively engage in social critique and social change. Critical race theory attempts to transform these institutional and social elements within the classroom. Scholars in this area have identiﬁed ﬁve key ele- ments to applying critical race theory in the class- room: (1) the centrality of race and racism and their intersectionality with other forms of subordination in education, (2) the challenge to dominant ideology around school failure, (3) a commitment to social jus- tice in education, (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and (5) the transdisciplinary perspective. Racial Beliefs or Racism One of the consequences of having a racial hierarchy is how it becomes justiﬁed through primordial or cul- tural deﬁciencies explanations. The justiﬁcation of racial inequalities through primordial explanations relieves the system of responsibility for those who beneﬁt from the racial status quo. Thomas Jefferson found it difﬁcult to dismiss primordial explanations for Black inferiority even when examples to the con- trary were abundant. These beliefs are not merely important when attached to political leaders, but such beliefs by individuals in society can continue to mani- fest racial inequalities through the society. Addition- ally, when primordial or cultural distinctions become part of a society’s discourse, all members, including those least aware, become engulfed in its ideological premises. For teachers, especially White middle-class teachers, this unconscious or conscious belief about race can be highly detrimental to a student of color. Gabriel Aquino See also Cultural Deﬁcit Model; Cultural Diversity; Culture; Further Readings Alba, R., Logan, J. R., & Stults, B. J. (2000). The changing neighborhood contexts of the immigrant metropolis. Social Forces , 79 , 587–621. Alba, R., Logan, J. R., Stults, B. J., Marzan, G., & Zhang, W. (1999). Immigrant groups in the suburbs: A reexamination of suburbanization and spatial assimilation. American Sociological Review , 64 , 446–460. Darling-Hammond, L. (1998). Unequal opportunity: Race and education. Brookings Review , 16 , 28–32. Gallagher, C. A. (2003). Playing the White Card: Using Ethnic Identity to Deny Contemporary Racism. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing signiﬁcance of racism (pp. 145–158). New York: Routledge. Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve. New York: Free Press. Nagel, J. (2000). Ethnicity and sexuality. Annual Review of Sociology , 26 , 107–133. Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2001). Legacies: The story of the immigrant second generation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ethnicity and Race 365 Shumway, J. M., & Hall, G. (1996). Self-selection, earnings and Chicano migration: Differences between return and onward migrants. International Migration Review , 30 , 979–994. Solo ´ rzano, D., & Ornelas, A. (2002). A critical race analysis of advance placement classes: A case of educational inequality. Journal of Latinos in Education, 1 , 215–229. Tate, W. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. Review of Research in Education , 22 , 195–247. Waters, M. C. (1994). Ethnic and racial identities of second-generation black immigrants in New York City. International Migration Review , 28 , 795–820. Webster, Y. O. (1993). The racialization of America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. E THNOGRAPHY Ethnography is a term that describes a broad range of research activities, including both the process of intensive ﬁeld research and the textual product repre- senting the results. Although scholars and practi- tioners debate the nuances of what constitutes the method of ethnography, a hallmark of ethnographic research is long-term ﬁeldwork within a particular environment, setting, or group of people. Ethnography has its roots in cultural anthropology and sociology but is now widely used in many areas of social sci- ence, including education. People frequently equate ethnography with qualita- tive research. However, not all qualitative research is considered ethnographic. Furthermore, although ethnographers rely heavily on qualitative techniques, they incorporate a wide range of information in their work, including numeric data. This entry discusses unique aspects of ethnography, as well as issues and debates on the topic, but ﬁrst, a brief history of eth- nography is presented. History Ethnography emerged in the study of exotic cultures in the late 1800s and early 1900s, because the scien- tiﬁc method of hypothesis testing seemed unsuitable for studying the complexity of human societies. Eth- nography grew in popularity because it emphasized listening to group members in natural settings rather than manipulating subjects under contrived experi- mental conditions. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski was an early pioneer in ethnography, publishing a groundbreaking study of the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea in 1922. Almost a half-century earlier, Frank Hamilton Cushing’s study of the Zuni people of the American Southwest for the Smithsonian Institution was the ﬁrst example of an anthropologist living with the people he studied for an extended period of time. Sociology also relies on ethnographic methods. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Chicago School of sociology studied inner city issues ﬁrsthand, such as crime and vice, homeless- ness, prostitutes, and gangs. Ethnography became pop- ular in educational research in the 1970s in studies with school-age students. Schools, classrooms, play- grounds, and teacher’s lounges constitute some of the many areas of ethnographic exploration in education. Unique Characteristics of the Ethnographic Process As mentioned at the outset, ethnography as a process relates to a family of methods involving researchers’ sustained immersion in particular social or cultural contexts. Speciﬁcally, ethnography differs from other types of research in its study design, the process of data collection, and the role of the researcher. The process of ethnography begins with a broad research question or focus, but the emphasis evolves dur- ing the course of ﬁeldwork. The design of ethnographic research does not follow a predetermined course. Instead, meaning is constructed through an iterative process of gathering information, reﬁnin g questions, and analyzing insights throughout the researcher’s extended ﬁrsthand experiences among community members. Participant observation is a fundamental method of gathering ethnographic data. It reﬂects the research- er’s active participation in the community’s daily life, simultaneously experiencing, observing, and record- ing social interactions among individuals in their nat- ural environments. Although the unwritten rule in anthropology has been for ﬁeldwork to extend across four seasons of a yearlong engagement, studies today are often compressed into a much narrower time frame. Modern ethnography, particularly outside of anthropology, also ﬁnds the researcher engaged in community activities but perhaps not living among community members. In addition to gathering infor- mation through participant observation, ethnographers also learn from interviews, key informants, and tex- tual and visual materials. 366 Ethnography The ethnographer’s role in pursuing an insider’s perspective is not that of a detached observer of events. Instead, the ethnographer is an integral part of con- structing meaning through actions in the ﬁeld, personal observation, and the ethnographic path followed. The ethnographer enters the community ignorant of the group’s social practices and must rely on members’ willingness to share their knowledge. As a result, com- munity members are often ref erredtoascollaborators, colleagues, or coauthors rather than participants. Unique Characteristics of the Ethnographic Product In addition to aspects of the ethnographic process just explored, the ethnographic product itself possesses unique characteristics. Internal validity is the primary gauge of an ethnographic text’s quality. An ethnogra- phy must reveal the researcher’s knowledge construc- tion process clearly enough that readers can evaluate the text’s claims. An ethnography’s value is in its ability to provide a thorough, convincing, and richly detailed presentation of the insider’s view of a speciﬁc situation rather than to generalize ﬁndings to other settings. Furthermore, ethnography’s goal is not reli- ability or replicability over repeated observations. In fact, different researchers with different perspectives could generate multiple ethnographies from a given research setting. This is not to say that any version would be acceptable; rather, any one of the many pos- sible ethnographies would require the researcher to demonstrate the ethnographic path leading to the claims made by the text. Issues and Debates Surrounding Ethnography Criticisms of ethnography revolve around the per- ceived lack of structure surrounding the research pro- cess, subjectivity involved, and the impossibility of generalizing results to other contexts. Ethnographers would argue that these limitations reﬂect strengths of the approach relative to hypothesis testing research. For example, lack of structure in research design allows for a full range of possible learning to emerge rather than results limited by the constraints of a spe- ciﬁc hypothesis. Critics also claim that ethnography lacks sufﬁcient controls for ensuring objectivity. Again, ethnographers would counter by arguing that no research is apolitical. They would suggest that all researchers bring their own biases and perspectives to their studies, starting with the choices of research questions and study designs. The ethnographer’s unique perspective is evident in the text, allowing readers to judge its inﬂuence on the work. Finally, ethnographers contend that a lack of generalizability is the price ethnography pays for rich detail and an in-depth insider’s perspective. Clearly, ethnography does not seek the same kinds of knowledge as hypothesis testing research. Ethnog- raphy has its own unique strengths and limitations. The strengths of both hypothesis testing research and ethnography are important to the pursuit of knowl- edge because neither one alone is appropriate for addressing the wide range of human issues to be studied. Angela K. Murray See also Culture; Naturalistic Observation; Qualitative Research Methods Further Readings Agar, M. (1986). Speaking of ethnography. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Atkinson, P., Coffey, A., Delamont, S., Loﬂand, J., & Loﬂand, L. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of ethnography. London: Sage. O’Reilly, K. (2005). Ethnographic methods. New York: Routledge. Pole, C., & Morrison, M. (2003). Ethnography for education. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press. Troman, G., Jeffrey, B., & Walford, G. (Eds.). (2005). Studies in educational ethnography: Vol. 11. Methodological issues and practices in ethnography. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. E VALUATION Evaluation can be deﬁned as disciplined inquiry to determine the worth or merit of things, where things may include programs, products, procedures, or objects. Although there is agreement about the desir- ability of conducting evaluations that lead to such value judgments, there are numerous related evalua- tion activities and models that do or do not do so. Those have been called pseudo-evaluations because they lack such judgments. These less-than-formal Evaluation 367 evaluations may be a piece of a larger set of evalua- tive activities, or they may be self-contained studies that do not identify the value issues embedded in what is being evaluated. In addition, it is possible that they are based on points of view that eschew making judg- ments of worth. These differences of opinion emerge from the complexities of deﬁning, implementing, and reporting evaluation studies as they attempt to deal with the issues discussed in this entry. Evaluation and Research It may be informative to distinguish activities con- strued as evaluation from those usually associated with research. Although there is no simple way to dif- ferentiate between the two, there are three dimensions on which they may differ. First, an evaluation need not have as its objective the generation of ‘‘new’’ knowledge. Evaluation is applied; research is basic. Second, evaluations produce information that is used to make decisions or form the basis of policy. Evalua- tions yield information that has immediate use; research may not. Third, an evaluation should be, ﬁnally, a judgment of worth. True evaluations result in value judgments; research need not and some would say should not. Personnel Evaluations Personnel evaluations involve making judgments about an individual’s performance as well as contri- butions to his or her work while providing guidance to improve the individual’s performance. Personnel evaluations intend to be unbiased, moral, reason- able, sufﬁcient, and precise assessments of an indi- vidual’s work. Generally, persons are evaluated over a speciﬁed time period with a particular model or approach. There are multiple personnel evaluation approaches and systems. Most systems, however, determine indi- vidual effectiveness and contributions to their organiza- tions as they relate to personal goals or workload agreements. Usually, the evaluations are conducted with predetermined and agreed-upon instruments, stan- dardized categories of professional contributions and growth, and jointly acceptable goals. Scoring rubrics are applied to each evaluation category. The results of personnel evaluations are used for decisions about pro- motion, salary adjustments, additional training, or other personnel matters. Program Evaluations Program evaluations, perhaps the most popular form of evaluation, are systematic inquiries into the value, merit, and worth of educational, medical, or training programs. Proper program evaluations include not only an estimate of the effects of the program but also judgments about materials associated with the pro- gram, possible side effects of the program, and the worthiness of the goals of the program. Program eva- luations can determine the quality or effectiveness of programs and provide ways to improve the program. For the most part, this encyclopedia entry describes issues and procedures related to program evaluation because of its relative popularity. The Special Place of Goals Evaluation studies are set in contexts where goals, standards, outcomes, or similar targets for improve- ment have been identiﬁed. How the goals are articu- lated and the importance attached to them form the basis for judging the object being evaluated. It is gen- erally acknowledged that deﬁning the goals speciﬁ- cally and rigorously is an essential ﬁrst step for deﬁning the program or project and directing the eval- uation. There are those, however, who would disagree with the statement and advocate goal-free evalua- tion—evaluating what has been accomplished rather than what was envisaged. Nevertheless, goals are subject to evaluation as well. A true evaluation makes a judgment of worth about the goals themselves. That judgment moves the evaluator away from a ‘‘goal attainment’’ model (no matter how stated or how determined, the purpose of the evaluation is to decide whether the goals have been met), to a more sophisticated evaluative stance. If, for example, the goals are trivial, it matters not whether they are met. On the other hand, a program seeking to promote high standards and attain substan- tively important goals can be successful even if the goals are not completely met. There are positive reasons as well for an evaluator to make judgments about the goals: It may be the case that the goals need to be defended. For example, the goals of subject-matter curricular areas are susceptible to criticisms about the goals. ‘‘Fuzzy’’ mathematics has been criticized because hypothetically students do not learn to compute well. Evol ution has been criticized because it is just a ‘‘theory.’’ On the other hand, 368 Evaluation intelligent design has been trumpeted as a competitor to evolutionary theory. In each of these cases, an evalu- ator and an evaluation should have a defense about the appropriateness of the goals . The needs of students and learners should dictate the appropriateness of the goals. The level at which the goals are articulated and to whom they apply are potential pieces of an evalua- tion. For example, educational institutions or other organizations may have goals that are not directly related to the students they deal with. A college or university may seek, for example, to increase its retention rate or aspire to national recognition of its programs. In achieving those goals, the institution may not have affected how well a student in that insti- tution is educated. On the other hand, if the institution had goals related to a newly deﬁned general education program, it should have direct effects on students. It is an important part of an evaluation to determine who the audience is for both the set of activities and the outcomes of the evaluation. Those audiences are called stakeholders in the evaluation literature and have various degrees of afﬁliation with the program and potential impacts, both direct and indirect, from the program. Also, the goals may be more appropriate for one group than for another. If an evaluation focuses on just the stated goals of a program or project, it is lik elytomissimportantout- comes. The search for side effects and unintended con- sequences, both positive and negative, should be as important a focus for an evaluation as is the judgment about the goals and the attainment of the goals. For instance, an increased emphasis on drill and practice in a mathematics curriculum could have the unintended effects of increasing or decr easing students’ interest in the subject or making them more or less able to solve problems. If a civics curriculum did not include a set of goals related to civic participation, it would be an inferior curriculum no matter what else it did. Also, it might have goals that preclude active civic participa- tion, in which case it would immediately be considered undesirable. To the extent pos sible, a true evaluation identiﬁes all of the important effects despite whether or not they are articulated by the goals. Formative and Summative Evaluation Whereas the goals of an evaluation are judgments of worth or value, the roles of evaluation may be either formative or summative. Formative and summative distinctions typically apply to the focus and timing of the evaluation. If the evaluation is focused on the early stages of a program or project, and the intent is to provide information to the developer that can be used to change that program or project, the evaluation is a formative one. If the evaluation seeks to make a ﬁnal judgment about the object, the evaluation is a summative one. Just as is true for other distinctions, whether a particular evaluation effort is formative or summative can be the subject of discussion. Michael Scriven ﬁrst made the distinction between formative and summative evaluations in the late 1960s. Federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, often expect both internal and external evaluators of their projects. The roles of these evalua- tors overlap substantially with the notions of forma- tive and summative evaluation. Although neither is necessarily relegated to one approach, the internal evaluator attends to issues most closely related to for- mative aspects of an evaluation; the outside evaluator tends to focus on the summative aspects and the over- all effects of the program or project. Change Over Time The nature of many evaluations is to show change over time. Some evaluation methodologies provide baseline data and structure the evaluation to show growth from that baseline. Perhaps too infrequently, evaluations are designed to show whether there are enduring effects as well, by including a long-term fol- low-up study. When the intent of educational pro- grams is to produce growth or change, a summative evaluation should determine the amount or type of change from the beginning of the program to the end. Formative evaluations provide direction for improving the program during the time frame deﬁned by a base- line and an end point. The summative evaluation is focused on the difference between the beginning and the end. Needs Assessments New projects or programs should be designed and implemented to respond to a particular set of needs for a speciﬁc set of purposes. How the needs are iden- tiﬁed and justiﬁed are questions of a needs assess- ment. A needs assessment is an evaluative process used to determine whether proposed changes are both merited and necessary. Needs assessments determine desirable improvements of a program, curriculum, or Evaluation 369 aspects of a professional training and materials associ- ated with a program. Needs assessments use a variety ofmethodstoascertaintheconditionsthatneedtobe changed. Those methods include the documentation of performance, completion of speciﬁed tasks, obser- vations, classroom data, and examination of current research evidence. Needs assessments evaluate current practices and determine needs for future trainings or programs. One set of judgments about the effective- ness of an intervention involves examining the rela- tionships between the initial needs assessments and the end products of the program or project. A caveat is that needs assessments may not dis- cover needs. Needs assessments may actually uncover symptoms of needs in the forms of programmatic pro- blems or desirable changes sometimes described as wants. Determining what are wants and what are needs is an extraordinarily important facet of a needs assessment. Costs and Benefits Because most evaluations are concerned with improv- ing something and making life better for participants, it makes sense that, to some greater or lesser extent, evaluators would adopt utilitarian views of the enter- prise. To the utilitarian goal of making things better for more persons, one can add that it is often desirable to be able to choose among competing alternatives and determine not only whether the outcomes are desirable but also whether one is getting the largest effect for each unit of effort. One way to address such concerns is through a cost analysis. Cost analyses take varied forms including cost fea- sibility, cost-effectiveness, cost-beneﬁt, and cost util- ity. To assess all of the costs, however, it is necessary to go beyond ﬁnancial concerns (what does the pro- gram cost monetarily) to attempt to measure all of the costs, including such things as psychological costs, if any, to participants. In addition, economists talk about opportunity costs, those costs that are related to what other things could have been done rather than what had been done. Cost analyses, especially cost-beneﬁt analyses, are not easy things to do. Despite the difﬁculty of asses- sing the costs of an educational program or interven- tion, costs may be easier to delineate than are the beneﬁts of that program or intervention. Enumerating beneﬁts can be costly and time consuming. A cost- beneﬁt analysis is often called for by those who wish to make the judgments of worth discussed earlier. Educational programs, for instance, can provide experiences that have both short- and long-term effects. Without proper follow-up studies, therefore, the prudent evaluator may wish not to claim that a cost-beneﬁt analysis has been conducted. An evaluator should not eschew cost analyses sim- ply because they are difﬁcult. Both the effects of the intervention and the amount of time and money devoted to the evaluation should be viewed in some sensible way in terms of whether consumers are ‘‘get- ting their money’s worth.’’ Professional Organizations Professional organizations produce and orchestrate frameworks and structures of professional practice for evaluations. These organizations function as forums where professionals discuss varied perceptions and approaches to conducting evaluations and understand- ing evaluation processes. Professional evaluation organizations intend to improve evaluation theory and practice. At the annual conventions of the American Evaluation Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Psychologi- cal Association, professionals present and discuss eva- luations, evaluation models, and evaluation theories with the goal of improving practice in mind. Professional Standards The professional evaluation standards developed by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation are used to guide and structure evaluations of educational and training programs, as well as other projects and materials. The standards hold evaluators accountable for making useful and accurate conclu- sions of merit and worth of the objects being evalu- ated. Evaluation standards include utility standards, feasibility standards, propriety standards, and accu- racy standards. Utility standards require an evaluation to be useful to the various participants, audiences, and stakeholders. The utility of an evaluation depends on having met the needs of those affected (stakeholders) by the program or product being evaluated. Feasibil- ity standards require evaluations to be practical, real- istic, and sensible. Evaluations, therefore, need to be conducted with only the necessary levels of assets such as time, personnel, or materials. Propriety stan- dards guard the rights of those participating in the 370 Evaluation